Gunslinger
by Carikube
Summary: In a Texas ghost town, Sam is mistaken for an 1890’s gunslinger who committed a heinous crime. When a thirst for revenge transcends time, two long dead men will finally get their bloody vengeance.
1. Chapter 1

Beta: A-Blackwinged-Bird   
Warnings: Violence, language, plentiful Sam-whumpage, and highly doubtful medical procedures.

**GUNSLINGERS (Chapter One)  
**

"All seems quiet at okay corral," Sam said as they strolled through the centre of the small abandoned Texas ghost town. 

Dean scanned their surroundings, the sun hot on his back. Shadows stretched long and thin across compacted desert sand, and dangling chain-link rattled in the breeze. Beyond the dusty street lay miles of barren desert scrub. Enviable peace and quiet, if a man sought that kind of solitude – or if he hankered to live wild and free with only the burrowing prairie dogs as company.

Dean shuddered and stepped in closer to his brother. "You picking anything up?"

Sam tilted the EMF so Dean could see the screen.

"I don't mean with that. I mean with – " he raised one hand and made air twirls with his fingers around Sam's head – "you know."

"No," Sam said, and it came out a little harsh, a touch frustrated. 

"Just asking." Dean let his hands drop to his sides, his shoulders relaxing. He loosened his grip on the shotgun by his side.

Twenty minutes of scouting the ramshackle town had revealed nothing supernatural. The EMF remained tonelessly silent. Brad Jennings, the owner of the property and a man whose eyes boggled out of his skull as he told of two dead men roaming his land, had duped them. Well, Bobby had warned them as much.

Dean had kept Bobby's opinion to himself. The oppotunity to roam around the desert, nothing but a man's isolation-induced ramblings to threaten them, seemed like the ideal hunt right about now. Sam, if he had known, would never have agreed. The kid had become a demon-hunting fanatic. It just wasn't healthy.

Sam chose that moment to agitatedly tap at the EMF before he thrust it out before him. Dean smirked and languidly spun on his heel, turning in a slow circle to take in the five buildings that made up the small town: bank, grain store, two non-descript cottages that might have been dwellings, and a saloon.

"Someone ought to develop this place," Dean said. "Neaten it up, farm the land or subdivide it. All this open space."

"Tourists flock to ghost towns." 

"I'm not seeing any tourists, Sammy."

"Yeah, well, it's heritage listed so he can't just bulldoze it."

"No, but he could develop." Dean shrugged toward the saloon. "I see dancing girls, lights, beer on tap. Out here, all this space, no wives. Men would flock from miles."

"You'd flock from miles."

"My point exactly."

Sam pulled the EMF in close and exhaled heavily. "Nothing's showing. We're wasting our time."

"We should just check around to be sure. Where'd Brad go anyway?"

"Still slurping his Shiner maybe."

"Now what sane man uses a straw to drink beer?" Dean opened out his hands in a gesture of over-exaggerated bemusement. "I mean, c'mon. It's beer. There are rules."

Sam shrugged and looked toward the largest of the five buildings. "He could be in the saloon."

Dean tracked his brother's gaze. Single story, flat shingle roof, the double hung swinging doors shaded by an overhead verandah. The doors swung a little. They hadn't checked that building out yet, at least not inside. Though they had scanned the perimeter and no ghostly vibes registered. "Maybe they've got cold beer on tap and he's refilling."

"Don't be counting on that." Sam held the EMF out again, his face rumpled in consternation. "The history of this place is bizarre. Used to be a thriving mining town, then one day everyone packed up and took off. No-one knows why."

"No lights, beer and women."

"Ha ha."

"If I weren't a hunter, I'd be a comedian."

"You'd be broke."

"And I'm not now?"

Sam snorted and started toward the saloon. Dean fell into step beside him. "I'd give my right boot for a Demon Drop. Burns you right here." He beat at his chest with one fist. "That's how you know you're alive."

Sam paused mid-step. "You missed today's Ritalin dose?"

"Oh, that's funny. Hilarious. Sammy cracked a joke." He mock punched his brother. "I'll take the Demon Drop, you'll get the Sour Death. How's that sound?"

Sam looked ill, then angry, then incredulous – all in a cinematographic super-flash. His mouth opened but Dean grabbed his arm and silenced him.

"Dude, you _are_ Jim Carrey. Rubber face. Holy shit, we can make a fortune. Vegas, we are going to Vegas. Along the strip, they have—"

Only one expression concreted his brother's face then, and it was not particular pretty. Six feet four of pissed off little brother was sort of scary… and immensely funny. He chortled and metaphorically backpedaled, deciding (undoubtedly with great wisdom) that referring to _Ace Ventura_ would result in pain to his body and ego. Course, he could always use the shotgun….

"Get serious, Dean. We've got a job to do."

"All work and no play—"

"Will get us killed. When this is over, we can play."

"Promises, promises." Dean eyed his brother, discomforted by the ramrod spinal rigidity, the stress tic beneath one eye, the determined clench to his jaw. "You know," he added, his tone deliberately light, "A Flaming Nerd would suit you better. I'll order you one when we get to Vegas."

They reached the shadow of the saloon verandah. The chain-link jangled as the wind picked up. Dean reflexively grasped the shotgun as his fingers tingled. "You still not getting anything?"

Sam shook his head. "You know, not much is known about this place and Brad uses that to his advantage. His website focuses attention on the mystery of this town in the hope that tourists will be intrigued."

"Remind me never to hire his promotional company."

They stepped onto the dry-rot ted timber porch and Sam touched Dean's arm. "He wouldn't be web-camming us to increase business?"

"Web-cam?" Dean raised his hands to the side. "I'm putting the two words together and… it's not really computing."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Same principle as those porn sites you visit."

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"When you clear the history, you need to clear the cookies too."

Dean felt a rush of heat to his face. "Cookies?"

"Yeah, Dean, cookies. And not the Girl Scout type."

"Oh." He looked around, suddenly exceptionally uncomfortable. "You think we might be being watched." He shuddered. "Dude, that's freakin' creepy."

Sam pushed open the bat-wing doors, they squeaked, the sound eerie in the quiet. The EMF suddenly sparked to life, a high pitched whine as the lights flashed.

Dean's pulse spiked. With Sam in front, his huge freaking shoulders wedging the doors apart, Dean had no way to move past. He shoved at the doors, grunting as they held firm, Sam a lump of meat in a timber sandwich. The metaphor twisted his gut.

"Hey boys," a voice announced from inside the bar.

The deep Texan drawl forced the hairs to stand up on the back of Dean's neck. He touched Sam's arm, hoping to coax him back, but the younger man did not move.

"Been waiting for you to come on inside. Been watching you. Mighty brave of you to come here, after what happened and all."

Dean's skin crawled and he physically nudged at Sam, tried to get him to move aside so he could see. Sam stood stock still, frozen… as though under the aim of a weapon. It clicked in place then and Dean raised the shotgun. His fingers clasped over it as he heard the tell-tale sound of a shotgun being primed.

What the hell had Brad gotten them into?

Dean placed his free hand at the smooth curve of Sam's lower back, hard against the sweat-sticky shirt. He splayed the fingers out, palm flat, the contact firm. He tapped once, initiating communication.

"You really think you can just waltz back in here like nothing's happened? Now that makes you horse-shit dumb."

A second man laughed, a low malicious sound, and Sam shifted, almost imperceptibly, but the muscle movement was clear to Dean: two players, both armed. He couldn't get much more than that through the subtle communication, but he assumed that Brad was not present. Whether they had taken the rancher out, or he was involved, remained unclear. Apparently the boggle-eyed bastard had not been talking shit after-all.

Dean tapped again, in quick succession, signaling that he was armed and ready. The response came immediately – stand down. Evidently Sam wouldn't get clear in time if Dean tried anything. Dean blew out a breath and scanned the heat shimmering desert. The EMF meter clicked and shrieked spastically.

"Step inside, Sammy."

Dean's head jerked. How the hell did they know Sam's name? His earlier assumption that Brad wasn't involved now developed huge holes. Sam tensed against him, not communicating this time, just afraid.

"Inside, boy, before we pop ya full of lead."

Sam hesitated, leaned a little closer to Dean before he stepped forward. Dean followed, close enough to feel his brother's body heat, to stay in contact. His eyes adjusted to the rapid drop in light and he found that he and his brother were being held at gunpoint by two genuine gunslingers. One of whom now had his cold dead eyes firmly fixed on Sam and a sardonic grin on his scarred face. 

"I been waiting a long time for this," he drawled, fuming on dead air. "Sheriff ain't gonna protect you now, boy."


	2. Chapter 2

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Two)  
**

"You are a hard man to hunt, Samuel Bevins," Conrad said. His jaw creaked and his death corroded fingers stroked the barrel of the rifle in his hands.

Sam knelt with his hands clasped behind his head and stared mutely at a smear of blood on the floor. It was probably his own. Dean lay further over, closer to the door, sprawled ungainly, his breath raising dust. Sedated by a rifle butt to the temple.

Whatever role Brad had played in bringing them here, his relationship with the dead men was no longer in doubt. Actually, the whole unreal nightmare had become clear. The two spirits believed Sam had murdered their loved ones. Conrad's entire family to be precise, though Tom, the older one, was some form of relative, brother maybe, Sam wasn't really sure.

"You deaf, boy?"

Sam ignored that, because really, what was the point? His throat hurt from trying to explain himself. How the two spirits failed to see his modern dress, his mannerisms… that he couldn't possibly resemble a man from over a hundred years earlier, was inconsequential. The dead see what they want to see. Plain and simple. No reasoning with that.

Brad Jennings pressed the muzzle of his gun to Dean's head. Right at the temple, in that little hollow between eye and hairline. If the weapon fired, it'd blow Dean's brains out. Sam refused to acknowledge the threat – refused to show any reaction at all.

"How 'bout we blow a hole in your friend here," Conrad said.

Brad's gun moved and sank, muzzle point shallow, into Dean's left side. Sam noted it impassively, his lungs burning, his expression poker-flat.

Conrad sauntered across the floor, his boots making a harsh clunking sound against the timber boards. "He'd bleed out nice and slow. Painful-like."

Gut-shot, Sam thought. Greater survivability than a headshot, but out here, with desert as the only witness and sixty miles from the nearest town, it meant jack-shit. Dean would bleed out before Sam had made it ten miles, that's if he didn't roll the Impala first.

Conrad kept pacing, clunking his boots. Sam stared at the fixed spot on the floor. He breathed shallowly. His head ached and blood ran warm down his neck, seeped beneath the collar of his shirt.

If they shot Dean, Sam wouldn't be able to save him. See, he became reckless when it came to his brother's life. His focus narrowed, he blocked things out, blocked out threats. He lacked the calm, homicidal fury that kept Dean grounded and peripherally cognizant. He figured it was because his father and Dean had sheltered and protected him, but it didn't really matter, because their plan had failed spectacularly.

Great plan it had been too. Take out the dead guys in hand to hand combat. Fantastic!

If Brad hadn't knocked the shotgun from Dean's hands after feigning distress, things might have gone a whole different way. Though, maybe not – dead men feel no pain, but living ones sure as hell do.

Now his only chance was to buy time: allow Dean to be alone with Brad and maybe, hopefully, Dean could bring the rancher around – or overwhelm him in order to grab a weapon that would work on the ghosts.

Conrad stopped before him, hunkered down, his hideously dilated eyes inches from Sam's own. His breath reeked of rotting death and Sam instinctively turned his face away. Tom fisted a hand in Sam's hair and wrenched his head back.

"You killed my daughter, my son, my wife," Conrad said. His voice had the flat, inflectionless quality of the walking dead.

"And your dog," Sam added with a forced sneer, because what the hell he was probably screwed anyway.

Conrad smirked in a show of yellow rotted teeth and a putrid decaying tongue. "Yes, and the dog."

Sam swallowed convulsively, his leer losing much of its vigor.

"Old Red was the best damned hunting dog I ever had, and you blew his head off. In front of my children. In front of my wife."

Sam needed rock salt, a conscious brother… a damned miracle. He'd get none of those, just vivid accusations and a twisting stake of fear. Buying time no longer seemed a viable option.

"Rose kept herself for only me, and you… you defiled her."

Conrad snarled and back-handed him. The blow bloodied his lips and raised heat to his jaw. The hold on his hair tightened. Sam sought out his brother then jerked his gaze away.

"If we're gonna duel, I'll need a gun," Sam said. He shifted fractionally to ease the pressure on his aching neck. Tom overcompensated and Sam had no choice but to look down the bridge of his nose as pain cramped his upper back.

"No duel. You'll die like a coward."

"Where's the challenge in that?"

"No challenge. It's justice."

"There's no honor in killing a defenseless man."

Conrad studied him, the soulless chasms glittering, reflecting evil and madness and a century of lust and loss. "If we shoot your friend, would that hurt you?"

Sam refused to look away, refused to show how much that prospect tore his heart out. "No."

Conrad accepted that with unnerving ease. "Take him over to the Sherriff's office," he said to Brad. "There's a cell out back. We'll deal with him later."

Brad tucked the gun into a pocket, stood and started dragging Dean feet first across the saloon.

"No!" Sam twisted, wrenching his neck as he lashed out an arm. He sliced it into Tom's midriff, pushing him backwards into a table setting that collapsed beneath his weight. Dust lifted and sound exploded.

Brad continued dragging, as though on automaton, and Dean's head thump-thumped across the timber boards.

Sam wheeled and kicked, slamming Conrad in the side. The impact should have broken ribs, sent him flying – hurt like a vicious bitch. But Conrad bent laterally like a jelly puppet, feet cemented to the floor and head stationery. Before Sam could regain his balance, Conrad raised a two foot length of rusted rebar.

Where the hell had that come from?

Sam ducked and rolled. Scampered across the floor and dodged repeated blows in a frantic, panicked dance around the saloon. His goal, the open space beyond the bat-wing doors. Brad crossed the threshold and disappeared, taking Dean with him. The timbre of the rancher's footfalls gained a deeper resonance then tapered off entirely as he hit the desert sand.

For a moment sunlight lacerated the darkened room as the doors swung, opening a chasm of light – an opportunity. Sam lunged for it, beating tables and chairs out of the way, dodging the two dead men and their frenzied attack. The rebar lanced and parried – wielded like Luke Skywalker's light saber. It caught him across the back, drove him to his knees, his spine cracking. He scrambled blindly, moving even as his mind told him he no longer could.

He backpedaled into a corner, sweat stinging his eyes, his back on fire. Shudders ripped pain through the length of his torso, and his bowels cramped.

Conrad whipped the air with the metal lance while Tom kicked chairs out of the way to make a clear path.

Desperate, exhausted and pain-clumsy, Sam grabbed a chair, raised it legs out before him and charged into the gap. He drove it straight at Tom, who stood closest to the door. The timber prongs lanced the man's torso, drove deep into his innards then popped out the other side. The seat of the chair stopped when it flattened against the man's chest. Sam shoved, expecting Tom to skid backwards, as he had done before. But no, the man grinned with his paper dry skin, death leached lips and hell's own breath.

"Shit." Sam spun, his lungs failing to oxygenate his limbs as he faced Conrad. Tom grabbed his arms, cold, dead fingers pinning him in place. The timber seat pressed against his back.

Sam dug an elbow backwards, forgetting the timber chair, and smashed his humorous nerve with such force that his entire arm went numb. Small mercies, he thought miserably. The hold on his biceps tightened, the cold touch drilling through to the bone. He struggled because it hurt, Jesus it hurt!

"Sam Bevins, justice is served," Conrad said, and the dead man raised the rusted rebar.

Sam twisted away, recognizing the trajectory and the damage it would cause. But he had nowhere to go, and Tom's cement-like hold barred any chance at escape. The rebar whistled through the air. Sam closed his eyes, panting… bracing for the pain.

The rebar smashed into the left side of his face. Metal against flesh and bone. He cried out, his scream cut off as pain ignited. It flashed and seared. So intense that he couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move. He fell, loose limbed, landing on the floor. He tasted blood, felt the oxygen burn of air into an open wound and convulsed against the pain of it all.

Then… everything… just… faded.

For a blissful while he felt little pain, just a dulled grey nothingness. Not quite unconsciousness, but close enough that he could pretend he was in a motel somewhere, with Dean watching questionable content on cable television.

It didn't last.

When Sam regained his senses, he was outside, face down in the dirt, hacking up blood. Conrad and Tom stood over him, arms folded, faces knitted with morbid pleasure. The desert lay in a 280' vista, the saloon behind him. No sign of Dean or Brad.

Alone. He was alone.

He had wanted this – for them to take him away from his brother, to give Dean a chance.

"Where's my gun?" he asked blearily. "Can't duel without a gun." He pushed, sweaty handed, against the ground. Made it to his knees and swayed. His stomach played flyball with his bowels, and blood dried pasty tight to his face.

He was going to die.

The certainty of it weakened him, left him defenseless and hollow. It seemed unjust, unfair, but maybe it was due penance. As he knelt in the desert sand, two dead men observing his suffering with callous indifference, he accepted his fate – and he knew that through his death, these two men would achieve their peace.

It would mean something. It would matter. Conrad had lost his wife, his children… and his thirst for revenge had stolen his soul. Sam could give it back: he could give the man peace – he could make a difference. It made sense.

Except he didn't want to die.

He struggled to his feet, wavered like a top heavy flagpole as they grinned at him. Maybe he could run, though he doubted it. Sometimes there were four of them, sometimes six and his stomach roiled precariously. He bowed his head, closed his eyes and searched for composure, for a chance.

His mind fractured, and he fell to one knee, gritting his teeth as he opened his eyes. If they pitied him at all, and he knew they didn't, they didn't torture him by delaying the beating.

He tried to fight them, but his balance was off, his body refused to follow commands and ice-fingered Tom soon had him subdued and defenseless, his arms pinned behind his back, his feet locked into a stance that prevented escape.

"You defiled my wife." Conrad threw a gut punch. "Held her down" – another fist of knuckles – "forced your putrid self upon her." Four more blows, each fiercer than the last. "You made my children watch."

Sam tasted blood. His vision blackened and his head tipped forward.

"Never again," Conrad grunted and pile drove a fist into Sam's groin.

If Sam had held any breath, he would have screamed. But pain and shock had stolen that, instead he twisted, released by Tom, and staggered two steps before crumpling. They were on him faster than vultures on a newly dead carcass. The beating continued: fists, boots and words – evil, ugly images of depravity and suffering. Conrad's family had endured grave torment before their deaths. The dog – its head splattered from its body in one gory shower – had gotten off easily.

Sam sought unconsciousness, an escape from the gruesome images and the pain. Curled into a ball, he endured the beating with hazy stoicism. Consciousness ebbed and waned – but he kept an ounce of pride by making little sound. But when Conrad wrenched his right arm behind his back, forced him face down into the sand with such force that he choked, and twisted and twisted and twisted his arm, Sam screamed.

They gave him a reprieve after that, left him sobbing in the sand, bleeding and crying. His right arm still behind his back because he couldn't muster the courage to move it.

At some point he threw up, started choking on his own vomit and failed to make any effort to save himself. One of them, he wasn't sure which, hefted him up and held him until his airway cleared and his stomach had purged.

"That was for my son and daughter," Conrad said, his grave-deep breath burning tears to Sam's eyes. "And this is a taste of things to come."

Sam heard the clinking of chain. Dazed, he tried to make sense of the sound, of the movement of air around him. His arm spiked fiercely, and something slipped around his neck. Cold. Close. Intimate. His pulse notched up, his eyes widening, blinking in horrified understanding.

He reached for the metal links, swallowing convulsively as they tightened, cinching the soft skin of his neck, drawing tighter and tighter.

The chain squeezed, constricting his windpipe, cutting off his air. Sam struggled to his knees. Felt the biting closeness of Conrad standing behind him, fisted hands in the chains – drawing the links tighter. Sam's mind pitched black and red, flashes of pain interspersed with specks of nothingness. Lungs, desperate for air, billowed uselessly.

The chain cinched, link over link, biting deeper.

Death bore down, rupturing cells in a cataclysmic frenzy of cauterizing pain. Hot and cold. Sound and silence. So fast, so brutal, so final that Sam fell beneath it, helpless to offer any form of defense. Weak and hurting, he offered himself to it – splayed his soul with the knowledge that Dean wouldn't see, wouldn't know… wouldn't have to carry out his promise.

Twenty four years too late, and not a moment too soon.

In the moment of acceptance, the dark gift tore away. The chain released, rusted metal tearing into his neck as he fell. He felt the bite, registered the traumatic insult, and hit the ground face first. Consciousness splintered with the first ragged intake of heated desert air. The tattered gasps that followed leveled awareness to an abstract void.

"You will get a little rest now," Conrad whispered in his ear, the dead man's voice cutting like glass. "Then you will pay for killing my wife."


	3. Chapter 3

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Three)**

"They're gonna hang your buddy," Brad sneered, jostling Dean as he latched the chain to a D-ring in the wall. The rancher worked the links from outside the cell, his chest and stomach pressed hard against the metal bars as he tightened the chain to the wall.

"Come in here and fight like a man, you sniveling bastard," Dean said. He made a swipe for Brad's hands, snarling as the rancher lunged backwards. The chain pulled him up short, wrenched him off-balance and he went down on all fours. Pain zig-zagged through his skull while nausea moistened the glands in his mouth. He spat and slumped against the wall.

"He'll shit himself," Brad said. He wiped his hands down his shirtfront and, for a second gold glinted in his top shirt pocket. "Bowels go, you know. And eyes. Damn, they near pop right outa the skull. Mighty fine to see, that is." He peered into the cell, checking the D-ring from a distance.

Dean stood, wavering. "You need to shut the hell up." He gave a hard yank to the chains. "If you've hurt my brother—"

"You won't be breaking those anytime soon. Not till we want ya to."

"Where's Sam? Where did they take him?" Dean fisted his hands and wrenched the chain. Metal cut into his wrists, opened a thin gash on the back of his hand. The D-link held.

"It's justice." Brad moved to the cell door, but stayed on the outside. Out of reach.

"They're dead," Dean said. He stalked to the front of the cell and grasped the metal bars with both hands. Blood leaked in a thin line down his wrist. "The two Billy The Kid wannabee's, they're spirits. Walking, talking dead people. They've screwed with your mind, made you believe that you're one of them and that Sam – my brother – is a long-dead gunslinger."

"If you give us no trouble, we'll let you go."

Dean slammed his fists against the cell bars. "You hurt Sam and I'll rip your throat out!"

Brad hesitated at the cell door, momentarily pale faced, then spat and unlatched a long metal key from a ring on his side. It made a grating, raspy noise as it entered the mechanism and a single click as the tumbler slipped into place.

Dean swallowed hard, kept his chin raised in defiance. "Where is my brother?"

"Ever seen a chicken with its head cut off? How it runs around and around, spewing blood. You seen that?"

Dean snarled and jerked the chain, pulling it taut. Blood thickened and streaked his forearm, soaked into the sleeve of his jacket. Brad pulled the key from the lock.

"Hanging is sorta the same," Brad said. "Body twitches for minutes after, but you know the best part. If the neck don't snap, they feel everything and that twitchin' is the soul zappin' in and out. Couldn't think of any worse way to go. Slow like that, you know."

Dean closed his eyes as bile stung the back of his throat.

"We got no beef with you though. Just the other one."

"He's my brother." He opened his eyes and glared at the rancher. "The spirits have corrupted your mind, made you think he is someone else, that you are someone else and that this… this is somehow honorable. You are going to kill an innocent man, and when it's over you will wake up and have to live with the horror of that for the rest of your miserable freakin' life!"

Brad watched him with a curious shine in his eyes, an awkward gleam that might have been supernaturally induced or the flicker of humanity. Dean leaned forward and the chains around his wrists rattled. "Think about it. What do you remember, about here, about anything before this. You're forty years old, and I'll bet you can't even remember your last birthday. Why the hell do you think that is?"

"I had amnesia."

"That's what they've told you, but where's the head injury. Where's the scar? Christ, man, Sam's innocent, he didn't do anything, he is not who they say he is."

The man rested a hand on the bars, clasped the metal rails and looked down the hall. The ring of keys clinked on his side while he held the key to the door between forefinger and thumb. Dean heard something, a scraping sound, like something being dragged. His heart flip-flopped and he pushed closer to the door. The manacles dug deeper into his wrists.

"Please," Dean said in a low whisper as two men appeared at the far end of the hall. "Don't let them do this. I swear, it's not what it looks like and when this is over, you are going to hate yourself. Sam's innocent, he had nothing to do with the murders. Jesus, he wasn't even alive back then. Neither the hell were you."

The man looked toward him then back down the hall. The men moved closer, dragging something… someone. Dean knew before he saw him that it was Sam.

He choked on a strangled breath as he took in the sight of his unconscious sibling. They had worked him over well, and though Dean could not yet see any damage, he knew Sam was unconscious. When the men dropped him, Sam sprawled and lay still, his head twisted to the side and his face… oh God, his face.

"Sammy," Dean breathed. Anger flooded through him then, and he turned his attention to Brad. "I will fucking kill you for this. I swear, I will hunt your miserable ass down and gut you!"

The Texan looked at him again, uncertainty tightening his features. He fingered the key, toyed with it, so close that Dean could just reach out and grab it. But he didn't, because Sam lay helpless beneath the feet of two men – two spirits, who could extinguish the young man's life with one swift slash of a blade, or a shot from a rifle, or a well placed kick.

"He's innocent. He's an innocent kid, and they're killing him," Dean said, his voice as sharp and hoarse as broken glass. He raked his gaze over the older man. It stopped on the man's fingers, on the thin pale line around the older man's ring finger. Almost panting, Dean gripped the bars so hard that his hands ached. "You have a wife," he forced out in a low whisper. "Look at your ring finger, man. There's someone out there that loves you, who is missing you. Who wants you back. I can fix this, but you have to let me go and you have to buy me time."

Sam moaned and twitched as he roused on the floor between the dead men's feet. Dean couldn't see if his eyes opened.

"Give me the key and walk away. Get them drunk, share stories, I don't care, but give me some time." Dean knew he was begging, but he no longer cared. Brad had been human when he had led them here, and Dean had no reason to believe that the man had held evil intent. "Brad, please." He moved as close as the chain allowed.

"Put him in here with the other one," the Texan finally said.

Dean flinched and the two spirits looked up, stared at them with coal dark eyes, their expression's horrifically impassive.

"Why?" Conrad said, the pale scar down the side of his face curled inwards as he spoke.

Brad's hand tightened around the key. Dean held his breath, his heart pounding. He watched the dead men as they waited for a response.

"He's not lookin' so good." Brad gestured toward Sam. "You want him alive till dawn, then this one'll keep him that way."

Dean panted through barely parted lips, trembling with a mix of fear and rage as the dead men considered that, weighed it up and assessed the merits. They did so without speaking, without looking at each other, and Dean got the sick feeling that they were connected somehow: telepathically able to sense each other's thoughts, instinct and intent.

"Put 'em together," Conrad said to Tom as he leaned down and hitched a hand into Sam's armpit. Assisted by his congenial dead cohort, they raised Sam to waist height and dragged him down the hall.

Brad unlocked the cell and they threw Sam in. Dean caught his brother in a tangle of chains and slack knees, pushed to the floor by the younger man's weight. He held Sam, felt him breathe, heard the barely muted rasp of poorly veiled pain as the two spirits and Brad closed the door, locked the cell and stood outside watching them. Dean raised his chin in silent defiance.

When the three men walked away, disappeared out of sight, Dean lowered his brother to the dirt floor, rolled him onto his side into the recovery position and rested back on his haunches.

"Christ, Sammy." Dean raked his gaze over the younger man, his own stomach clenching in nauseating cramps. Sam's face bore evidence of a severe beating: a pasty mix of blood, sweat and dirt, so thick and crusted that Dean couldn't see where the injuries started and ended. The bleeding had stopped, coagulated by grit and the passing of time.

Sam was a mess. Dean stared helplessly, his fingers tingling with cold sweat. Sam blinked but made no effort to move, seemingly content to just breathe. He looked to be in shock – or damned close to it.

"Guess Brad wasn't talking bullshit afterall," Dean said dryly, and the awful humor felt like a tightening noose around his neck.

Sam slowly raised one hand to his face, shaking as he almost touched the bloodied flesh. His eyes cleared somewhat, though still heavy with pain. Dean frowned, leaned closer and gently caught Sam's hand. Grit, dried blood and sweat worked into his pores, exchanged from his brother's grasp.

"Easy, I've got you."

Sam's fingers tightened, crushing – desperate. His hand trembled, his breathing growing harsher as tears leaked from his eyes.

"Shh, hey, it'll be okay," Dean said hoarsely. The lie hung heavy and the chains rattled, calling him for a fool. He briefly closed his eyes, steadied his erratic breathing and managed to add, "Where else are you hurt?"

Sam didn't answer and his eyes roamed, shiny with pain. Dean felt a sharp stab of fear.

"Sam?" He touched his brother's face, forced the young man's focus to him. "How bad is…." His words trailed off as he got a look at Sam's neck. Abrasions ringed the flesh, as though something had been wrapped around, pinched… drawn tight. The answer came unbidden: chain.

"Can you talk?" Dean's voice shook. "Sam, look at me. Can you speak? What did they do? Sammy, what did they do?"

He knew. He knew without Sam telling him. They had choked him, wrapped chain around his throat and constricted. The potential injury ringed through Dean's ears, they could have crushed Sam's windpipe, torn his larynx, fractured his spine. The soft tissue damage alone….

Sam's hand squeezed his and the young man slowly drew his knees up. He mewled pitifully, his right hand twitching, the arm caught partially behind him. Dean's gaze drew to it and a cold hand tightened his chest.

Broken. The way the limb lay stretched out, evidence that Sam didn't dare to move it. Dean didn't need to see any blood or disfigurement to recognize the damage, he knew Sam. If Sam could draw the limb in, he would.

What else had they done?

He suddenly had to know. Dean hushed his brother, set one hand on his forehead and gently thumbed. "I'm going to check you over, try to relax."

"No… Dean… please."

Sam's voice, pain scarred and hoarse, brought tears to Dean's eyes. A mix of fear and relief washed through him. Sam could speak, he was breathing, though it sounded too much like a raspy wheeze for Dean's liking, but Sam was still in there: trapped in his broken body, but still aware.

"I won't hurt you," Dean said, his sinuses thick and burning. "But I've got to know if I can help."

Why, his overly imaginative mind queried. Sam had been beaten, choked, his arm broken… they wouldn't have left it there. Sam would have internal injuries, most likely severe. And in the morning Conrad and Tom would collect his brother, if Sam survived the night, and they would kill him.

Sam panted, his boots making restless scuff marks against the cell's floor. He whimpered, shivering. Dean quickly shucked out of his jacket and laid it over Sam's shoulders. "It'll be okay. You'll be okay."

"No."

"I won't hurt you."

"Dean…"

"Trust me, Sammy. I won't hurt you."

Sam tugged on his torn lip with his teeth, his eyes beseeching. He breathed raggedly, writhing now, restless with pain.

Dean went back to gently thumbing, his touch gentle. Tears blurred his vision and his tongue felt too thick, the words like razor blades in his mouth. "I'll make this right. I promise, I'll make it right."

Sam's gaze locked with his, hopeless and despairing. "Not… your fault."

Dean nodded, his jaw clenched. Directly not his fault, no, but Sam was his responsibility and he had allowed them both to walk into a trap – all because he wanted his little brother to relax. Well, Sam sure as hell wasn't relaxed now.

"I'll get us out of this," he said He had no idea how, but he would.

With careful movements, Dean checked his brother's abdomen for rigidity and heat. He didn't like what he found.

Sam had all the clinical signs of internal bleeding. His abdomen, though not yet rigid, was tender and he actively guarded it. Dean listed the abdominal organs in his mind: spleen, liver, pancreas and bowel. All vulnerable, all life threatening when damaged, though the duration until system failure varied. Sam's eyes were closed now, squeezed tight and tears pooled in the divot between cheek and nose. He sucked breath through flared nostrils and Dean couldn't even begin to imagine the pain. There was nothing he could do to ease it, so he comforted through touch, knowing it just wasn't enough.

The two dead men and Brad engaged in muffled murmuring toward the front of the building. It might be Brad working up a strategy to save them, or figuring a way to condemn them both. Dean raised his head and listened, tried to make sense of the muffled words.

The sound of Sam gagging brought Dean's attention back. Sam tried to push himself up, but clearly lacked the strength. Dean caught him, braced his shoulders and turned him to the side. He clasped Sam's broken arm at the wrist and held it, keeping it steady as Sam weakly retched. Stringy blood stained saliva hung from the younger man's lips, but though he heaved wretchedly, he didn't throw up and Dean wondered if he had before, when they were working him over.

Sam collapsed against him when the spasms eased: spent and barely conscious. He fisted a hand in Dean's shirt, his breathing strained.

"Rest, Sam. Don't fight it. You need to rest."

"Dean…."

"I know, kiddo. I know. Try to sleep, it'll help."

Sam fell quiet then, and Dean ached. Fear poked a fist deep into his gut. He soothed his brother, disturbed at how pliant Sam was, how accepting of the embrace. Brad had been right not to leave Sam alone. If they wanted him to survive the night, and clearly they did, then Sam needed monitoring. If he lost consciousness and threw up, he could suffocate to death on his own vomit. Dean couldn't help but think it would be the kinder of the two options the spirits had in mind for Sam.

Sam melted, his limbs loose. Dean tensed, scared, but Sam had only lost consciousness, his pulse was a little weaker than it should be, but steady. His breathing sounded strained though, and Dean worried about the damage to his throat.

He scanned the cell, searching for something cold to apply to Sam's neck, something to minimize the swelling. There was nothing. He gingerly touched at the damaged flesh and convinced himself that he was worrying over nothing. Maybe the swelling wouldn't affect Sam's breathing… maybe for once in their miserable lives they could cut a freakin' break.

Dean tried to ignore the other thoughts about what might be happening in Sam's body, what cells might be dying, how badly he might be bleeding inside. He held his brother, Sam's head on resting on his shoulder and soft breaths brushing his neck. He hadn't held Sam this way for almost twenty years, and had lived in fear of the day he would have to. The only situation that brought them this physically close was grave injury and a situation beyond their control. They had endured both injury and captivity, but never both situations together – and never so dire.

Sam had been hurt before, but Dean had always been able to cut and run. There would be no running now. Even if he could break the chains, he couldn't break out of the cell. And even if he could, he wouldn't leave Sam.

He rested his chin on Sam's head, the rancid scent of blood and sweat making his stomach cramp. His kid brother didn't deserve this, didn't deserve any of the suffering he endured. It was cruel. Sam had been blessed with a gentle soul, an insight and sensitive determination that made him feel pain deeper than most. And fate had made him pay dearly for that sensitivity.

Dean cast the miserable thoughts aside and waited for the rancher to return, to save them – to show some shred of humanity in the altered reality that now dictated their lives.

But Brad didn't come. And as darkness fell and cold ate its way into the cell, Dean relinquished his grasp of his injured brother, laid him on his side and soothed him as he struggled toward consciousness. When Sam quieted again, Dean faced the dark alone, bitterly resolved to save his brother, even if he had no clue how.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: As you are no doubt aware, email alerts are down again. So, for those of you who are reviewing this story, please know that each and every review is like gold. Appreciated and treasured and used to feed the (arguably, sadistic and twisted) muse. Speaking of sadistic and twisted, this story is getting darker, so the more squeamish of you might wish to step off the bus right about now. (wink)_**  
**

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Four)**

"What else… did I do?"

Dean stretched, trying to reach the window. Stars glittered in the night sky and colds' breath whispered through the bars. Night had fallen well over four hours earlier, and Dean figured it was around midnight. His watch had stopped, smashed by one particularly enthusiastic tug on the chain. He didn't miss it.

"What do you mean?" Dean said as he finger-traced the length and breadth of the rectangular gap in the wall. The chain barely reached this far, and the manacles once again lanced the flesh of his wrists and forearms. If he survived this, he'd look like he'd attempted to slice open his wrists. He figured the memory would haunt him just as if he had.

"Who else…?" The question trailed off into a moan.

Dean looked at his brother and unease cleaved his spine. "Sam?"

The younger man rested against the wall, slumped in the corner. The position seemed to lessen the strain on his lungs and helped him to breathe. It didn't help with the pain though, nor the slow deterioration. Dean was no fool, Sam was dying.

Without medical assistance, surgery and drugs, Sam wouldn't last another twenty-four hours, maybe not even twelve. But Dean wasn't worried about that, he cared only about the next six. If he could get Sam through the night, he figured he could get him through the rest.

"Sammy?" Dean crossed the cell and dropped into a crouch. The chains around his wrists sang loudly in the quiet. He touched his brother's shoulder and thumbed at the swollen flesh around his neck. It was getting worse, as was Sam's breathing.

"You're doing good, kiddo. Stay with me. Just a bit longer." He glanced at the cell window, at the twinkling stars. Six hours was a damned long time.

Sam's eyes opened and listlessly wandered. "How… who?"

"Shh, it's okay." Dean cupped his brother's neck. His hand shook and his tongue felt swollen and thick. "Try to relax."

"I'm sorry." Sam's gaze tracked to his and held. Tears glistened in the weak moonlight. "I tried to… be strong."

"You are strong. You're the strongest man I know. Two dead gunslingers aren't going to take you out."

"Dad was right."

Dean's flesh tingled, the unpleasant sensation of comprehension drilling closer. He shifted, his free hand going to Sam's abdomen. It felt warm and swollen, but no worse than before.

"I failed," Sam said. He brushed Dean's hand away and turned his face toward the wall. "Leave me."

"No can do."

Sam made a low guttural sound and tried to shift away. Dean easily stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "You are not giving up on me now. You see any fat lady here, shrieking her ass off?" He waited a moment, then added, "cos until you do, you are staying here, with me, and you will keep breathing. You will keep fighting."

Sam squeezed his eyes closed, his forehead rippling. "No. No, I need…."

"You need to rest."

"I killed them." His voice was flat now, monotonic, and his breathing grew immeasurably worse. "I raped… his wife. Killed his--"

"No. Sam, no." Dean abruptly grabbed his brother's shoulders and shifted until he was in Sam's line of sight. He shook Sam and rattled his eyes open. "You are innocent. Sam, look at me. No, don't…" He forced Sam's head up when it dipped, made him make eye contact. "You're confused and hurt and you're getting things mixed up. You didn't do those things. You didn't."

"I'm evil."

"No you're not. You have never hurt anyone. Not you, Sam. Not you."

"Sorry… let you down." Sam smiled, puffy faced and bruised. The expression twisted into a grimace. "It's over now… all… over."

Sam slumped then, unconscious.

"For the love of…." Dean shook his brother, made his head rock on his shoulders. Panting, he forced himself to still when Sam didn't rouse.

He hadn't predicted this. That Sam would muddle things around and believe the dead men's accusations. In hindsight, he should have.

Dean hurriedly slouched into a half-seated position, slid backwards against the wall and gently maneuvered his unconscious brother until Sam's back rested against his own chest. He had enough play in the chains to hold Sam securely, close enough so he could brace the younger man's neck and head… and he could whisper in Sam's ear.

"You didn't do those things. You never have. You never will." He licked his dry lips, his heart pounding. In his arms, Sam trembled and his breathing grew worse.

"Sammy, don't do this. Don't give up on me. Not now. You're not dying at the hands of a pair of sadistic 19th century gunslingers. Dammit, that is so fucked up. Even for us. You hearing this?"

He talked in a low whisper, kept his voice calm and soothing and wafted breath over Sam's right ear. He talked until his voice went hoarse: repeating over and over what had brought them here, what had happened. He didn't mention the word evil, he didn't say anything negative at all, because if Sam somehow could hear, he feared that the words would be picked out and misconstrued.

Hours passed in a pained, laborious movement of time. Sam regained consciousness several times, restless and miserable. Each time Dean quizzed his pain-dazed sibling for proof that Sam understood he was innocent, but he didn't get the answers he needed.

Morning found Dean holding his brother tight against the inevitable. Dawn sunlight chased shadows, toyed with dancing dust motes and pierced Dean's eyes with a bright, callous intensity. He grunted and shifted, clenched his jaw against tight muscular pain across his shoulders and all the way down his back.

He blinked in the sunlight, flinched as a thud came from somewhere outside. Jerked upright, the movement unwillingly caused Sam to list to the side. The younger man slumped toward the floor, limp and quiet. Dean made a soft sound of distress and tugged him back. Fumbled actions got Sam back into the corner, propped upright, his head tilted back against the juncture between the two walls.

In the daylight, Sam's condition was made fully known, and Dean wondered how his brother had made it this far. Sam's face more closely resembled one of the dead things they hunted. Swollen on one side, dark with bruising and dried blood, patterned with sand and dirt. Maybe once the wound was cleaned, the cheekbone set, it wouldn't look so bad. Dean just wasn't sure he could believe that.

Sam's neck was worse. Swollen and discolored, deep angry welts where the chain had cut into the flesh. Dean could hardly bear to look at it, to see his brother so badly hurt. And those injuries were only part of it. He hadn't checked the arm, there hardly seemed any point in causing Sam more pain. Internal injuries were a given, but Sam had remained stable overnight, and that offered a thin thread of hope that he would last into the day.

Sound came from outside again, a hollow thump. It came from the west side, furthest away from them. Dean flinched and hugged his arms around his chest. The manacles around his wrists pressed cold against his shirt.

He knew that sound. Knew what it meant.

"It's not ending with that," he said with determination. "No way in hell will you die like that."

No way in hell would Sam die at all.

Resolved, he lifted Sam's shirt, flattened his hands across the bruised and swollen abdomen. It felt no worse than it had last night, and Dean began to hope that Sam's well developed abdominal muscles had shielded him from serious injury. He still had no doubt that Sam was bleeding internally, but minor tears that leaked over hours gave them time. It gave Dean time.

Another thump reverberated through the building. Dean clenched his fists and rocked backwards. For a moment he considered the state of his forearms, cut up by the steel manacles, crusted in dried blood and dirt.

"We make a fine pair, Sammy," he said. "If it's any consolation, chicks dig this shit. The whole wounded hero scenario. When we get you to a hospital you'll have nurses fawning all over you."

Sam offered no response, and Dean scrubbed at his face, wincing as he hit a wound on the side of his head. Memories lanced, filled with regret. No use for that now. There was only one way out of this, and he needed Sam conscious.

"Sam, rise and shine." He lightly jostled his brother. "C'mon, it's strategy time."

It took too long to rouse Sam, and as the thumps from outside the building increased in frequency, Dean bit his lip, whispered an apology, and forcefully nudged Sam's broken arm.

The reaction was instantaneous, and wretched. Sam woke, startled, whipping his good arm out in a defensive strike. Dean blocked it.

"Easy, take shallow breaths. Slow and regular."

"Dean?" The name, exhaled on a choked wheeze, held question and pain.

"I'm here. Take a minute to get your bearings."

Sam's gaze flittered, his features pale. He breathed with the raw unsteadiness of a badly oiled chaff-cutter. Dean caught Sam's hand and grasped it firmly. "Breathe, slow and easy. You're doing great."

Panic etched Sam's face, cut lines into his forehead and made his chest dip. "No." He ripped his hand away. "You have to… go."

"I'm not going anywhere without you."

"Dean…."

The misery in Sam's voice ripped at Dean's heart, and proved to him that his night-time vigil and whispered words to convince Sam of his innocence, had achieved nothing. He had only one chance left.

"Sam, listen to me carefully. You're hurt, badly. But you are innocent. You don't deserve this, and whatever you are thinking, whatever you think you remember, it's wrong. We came here together, I thought it was a false lead, I…" The words scoured his throat and he inhaled sharply before continuing. "I screwed up, Sammy. I let my guard down, I didn't back you up and… and now there are two dead guys who think you murdered their family."

"I… did."

"No, and when they show their scrawny asses in here, which they will, you'll see for yourself. They're ghosts, spirits, grief stricken dead men who have evolved over decades into vengeance driven madmen. Don't try to fight them, because you can't win. Just… just stay awake."

"I… I killed…."

"You've never killed anything that wasn't already dead."

"But—"

"Do you trust me?"

Sam clutched at his throat, his breathing unsteady. His gaze shifted, shimmering and panicked. He stared toward the window, as though searching for some demonic intervention. "I'm… evil."

Dean forcibly caught Sam's chin, grasped it between thumb and forefingers and turned his brother's face toward him. Blood and dirt flaked off on his fingers. "You are not evil. You are innocent, you didn't do this, any of it. I'll never lie to you, Sam. I'll die to protect you, but I will never lie. If you'd done it, I would tell you. You know I would."

He flinched as the sound came from outside again, a jarred heavy thump, and the building vibrated.

Sam turned toward it, trembling, his broken arm clutched protectively at his stomach. He seemed to shrink in on himself.

Dean let his hand drop to his lap, the chain clunking loudly. "We can't fight them, Sam. There's no point in trying. But I can work on Brad. Figure out what has gotten him connected to them and break it. Then, I can take them down. I can do it, but… but I need some time."

Sam fidgeted and shifted nervously. He looked pale and sick and Dean doubted if he even really understood what was being said to him – what was about to be asked of him. Dean swallowed hard, queasy sourness tightening the glands in his mouth.

This wasn't fair. Wasn't right. But he had no choice.

"You have to hold onto consciousness, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what they do to you. Sam, look at me." He waited until Sam turned wounded eyes onto him before he continued. "They're going to.…"

He couldn't say it. Couldn't tell his little brother what the men had planned for him – because maybe it wouldn't happen. Maybe he could stop it and Sam need never know. He smiled thinly and said, "If something bad happens, you have to stay conscious. Don't give them reason to hit you or hurt you. If they take you, then go willingly, and… no matter how bad things get, or what they do, or how much it hurts—"

The front door opened and light splashed down the hallway, cut off as a figure blocked the doorway. Dean couldn't see who it was. He abruptly leaned close to his brother, his eyes burning with tears, his forehead against Sam's. "I will come for you. I will. I promise. But you have to stay conscious. Don't pass out, Sammy. Whatever they do to you, don't pass out. Tell me, what do you have to do?"

"Dean?"

"Tell me."

"Don't… pass out."

"No matter what?"

Sam sobbed and his good hand clutched at Dean's arm. "Dean…."

"Sam, say it."

"No... matter what."

"Good boy." Dean drew back, ruffled his brother's hair and abruptly stood. He shakily wiped at his nose with the back of his hand and wavered toward the front of the cell. He reached the bars and gripped them, white knuckled. The shadow lengthened as it approached.

Brad. Dean prayed it would be Brad. That somehow the rancher had dealt with the two spirits, had defeated them, tricked them, he didn't care, as long as they were gone.

Keys jangled and Dean held his breath. The sunlight blocked the man's face, made it hard to make out features, then a second figure appeared, behind the first and Dean could see the first man. He carried a rope, with a noose. It swing in a slow, loose arc by his side.

Dean tasted bile. He moved back, his legs like jelly and his gut knotted so hard that he felt sure he would be sick. He looked at his brother who stared back, his eyes clearer now, aware. Dean's breath hitched. How the hell could he expect Sam to do this?

This wasn't real. Wasn't happening. Dean pushed to the front of the cell as Conrad stopped before them. The corded noose swung back and forth. Behind him, Sam made a strangled, shocked sound, clearly he had figured it all out.

"I won't let you do this."

Brad moved forward, a cocky smirk on his face. He shoved the key in the lock and turned it. Dean reached through the bars and grabbed at him. His fingers caught in the man's shirt pocket. Fabric ripped and a flash of gold sparkled and fell. The object hit the floor with a sharp metallic thunk, then rolled.

A gold pocket watch. It languidly spun, turned on itself and stopped. Dean stared at it, a sliver of comprehension – of hope – rushing through him. The inattention cost him dearly.

Conrad lashed out, caught Dean's wrists and wrenched them down, hard into the horizontal bar with enough force to break the bones. Dean let out a strangled cry and withdrew, his left wrist throbbing with a tight, white pain.

Brad inserted the key, twisted it and the cell door opened. Dean blocked the entrance, his hands before him, his feet braced. He sought to make eye contact with Brad, but the older man backed away, his head bowed, now strangely subdued.

Conrad and Tom moved in.

The fight was unfair and dirty, and Dean didn't stand a chance, but he fought because failure was unthinkable. But the unthinkable happened and Dean was pushed, dazed and bleeding to the back of the cell as Conrad moved in on Sam.

"Sam, don't fight them. Don't give them reason to hurt you."

Dean's pleas were cut off by a violent back-hand that spun his head into the wall. He dropped, stunned, aware enough only to turn his head so he could see his brother.

Sam had backed against the wall, bewildered. His head swiveled toward Dean and their gaze locked.

"Sammy," Dean said brokenly.

Sam's shoulders stooped then, the defiance leaching right out of him. He offered no defense as Conrad forced him to his knees and placed the corded noose around his already damaged neck.

"Stay awake. Stay strong," Dean murmured. "I'll save you." The words suffocated in his throat – a desperate, truth starved lie.

He looked at Brad who stood by the door. The man wore a slack expression, his gaze distant. It was the only thing that kept Dean down, that allowed him to breathe through the pain. The watch. It had to be the watch. And Conrad and Tom must have one as well.

Dean tried to see. Tried to catch a glimpse of gold, but the men wore multiple layers and even if a watch was there, it would be impossible to see.

If this didn't work – if he was wrong – Sam would die without having put up a fight. His fiercely proud brother would face death with the knowledge he had made no effort to save himself or Dean. The ultimate failure – the greatest shame.

Dean looked away when Sam bowed his head, the broken submissiveness killing something inside of him. The deflection inadvertently brought his gaze across to meet Tom's. The dead man had hunkered down, matching him at head height, a lurid, self-congratulatory grin slicing his face.

"Ever seen a chicken with it's head cut off," Tom said.

"Go to Hell."

"Your buddy will be there first." Tom straightened in a fragmented blur of motion, and delivered a stunning blow to Dean's face.

Dean's head whipped sideways and he hit the ground, sucked in dust and choked on it. His ears rang with a solid, jarring bell sound and he was helpless against the lot of it. Thoughts screamed through his mind, frantic commands to move, to just get the hell up and move! But somehow mind had disconnected from body and all he could do was lay there, bleeding and gasping as they took his brother away.

Dean came to alone. He pushed to his feet, and staggered to the bars, fell against them as blood dripped from his mouth and nose. He couldn't breathe properly, but it didn't matter. They had Sam. They were going to hang Sam.

Maybe they already had.

"Brad. Brad, look at me." He clicked his fingers, his injured wrist hugged against his chest, and tried to get the rancher's attention. But the man had transformed into a living zombie: deaf and mute, staring at the floor.

The fallen pocket watch lay three feet outside of the cell. Out of reach. Dean stared at it, forming blood bubbles on his lips as the seconds literally ticked past.

Brad should have broken out of his stupor by now. He had dropped the watch, broken the connection… then why wasn't he moving. Why wasn't he waking up?

"Brad! Wake up you freakin' asshole!" He stretched against the chains, ripping pain through his injured wrist. "C'mon. C'mon."

No response. Nothing, just a blank, unblinking stare.

"Son of a bitch," Dean snarled. He spun, searching the cell of something to throw. A tight creaking noise – like a heavy weight suspended from a gallows – made him freeze in place.

It came again. Low and shuddering. The agonizing wail of newly stressed timber, of corded rope over hewn wood… of imminent death.

Dean went cold. He thought he might piss himself. Thought he might throw up.

More creaking, the fractured resonance of a body in suspension: twisting, flailing, dying.

Sam.

They had just hung Sam.

Time had officially run out.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Similar warning as last chapter, but this chapter has the nasty stuff that last chapter warned you about (violence, inpleasant images and language). Seriously, please read with caution. I don't think it's too bad, but then I have a reasonably high tolerance -- well, when I'm writing it, not so much when I'm reading. (wink). _

_As before, I thank each and every one of you for the amazing reviews! This chapter has a cliffy, but it's far less evil than the last one... thus my quick update because, yes, leaving you all with that last chapter was evil. In my defence, this one wasn't ready to post. Honest. Truly. (slinks away, dodging stones).  
_

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Five)**

"Brad!" Dean slammed the chains against the cell bars. The sound rang in his ears, made nausea bite the back of his throat, and charred pain through his wrist.

He staggered, his knees buckling. One knee hit the ground and his vision blackened. He wavered there, defying gravity and the threatening pull of unconsciousness. "C'mon, Dean. Suck it up."

"What did… I do?"

Dean's head jerked up and for a blinding instant he thought it was Sam. Thought his brother stood outside the cell. His heart pounded and he bucked upright, desperate to make sure.

But it wasn't.

"What did I do?" Brad said again. He fiddled with the key in his hand and scanned the floor around him. He was shaking. "What happened? What—"

Dean shoved one arm through the bars. "Unlock the cell."

"What did I do?"

"Unlock the fucking cell and get these off me!" He thrust his wrists forward. "Now!"

Creaking reverberated through the building, stressed timber crackling beneath strain.

"Brad, move!"

Brad shifted his weight from side to side, taking shuffling steps. It took an eternity for the door to open, even longer for him to find the right key for the manacles.

Dean fumbled with them, panting now, his hands trembling so badly he could hardly shuck them off.

"Your gun. Where's your gun?"

Brad looked set to cry. His chin trembled and he flapped his hands pathetically. "I… I don't know."

Dean spun him, shoved him against the cell bars and retrieved the weapon tucked in the waistband of the other man's pants. He back-stepped, took a breath to still his shaking hands, and sprinted from the cell and down the hall. He crashed against the door, slammed so hard into it that his shoulder exploded in pain, then he was outside and the sunlight stunned him.

West. The sound had come from the west side. He spun, kicking up dust, and ran.

He reached the corner, rounded it and stopped dead.

Time ceased. Sound ceased. His heart quit pumping.

Sam hung, the noose around his neck, his face red, his eyes bulging, and his tongue, almost oversized, protruded from parted lips.

Two clear feet separated Sam's boots from the ground, and his long legs splayed and sought purchase in the air while one hand clawed fruitlessly at the rope around his neck. The other arm hung listless, the hand jerking spasmodically.

The gallows creaked and groaned with each sudden jerk on the rope. Death throes. Brad had been right, it was like a chicken.

Dean froze. Horrified. He couldn't move, couldn't get his brain to function, his limbs to respond to the mental panic.

That wasn't his brother. His Sam. No way… no!

Instinct kicked in and Dean raised the gun, straightened his arm, aimed and fired. It happened so fast that he didn't think, none of it processed, but somehow he hit the rope, the bullet severed it with surgical precision, and then Sam was down, heaped on the ground in a tangle of long limbs. The rope fell and coiled on Sam's back like a serpent.

Dean panted, his gaze darting to the dead man, then back to Sam. His brother lay where he had fallen, face down, one arm twisted beneath him, his legs turned out behind him.

Dean dropped the gun. It made a dull thud as it hit the desert sand. The two spirits turned to face him, their dark eyes malevolent, shining with hatred and need.

"You shouldn't have done that," Conrad said.

Dean's attention volleyed between the dead gunslingers and his brother. He called to his sibling, but his voice didn't work right, not loud enough and the blood down his throat and in his nose turned Sam's name into a rasped lisp.

The hot desert wind told him that he had failed. That the drop was too far, that Sam was too badly injured and unable to exert the muscular strength to protect his trachea and throat. The rattling chain link on the saloon verandah across the street, the tumbleweed that spiraled topsy-turvy behind the dead men, and the deathly silence all spoke the same message.

As the spirits walked toward Dean, perfectly in sync, their spurs clicking against the rocky desert ground, Dean had no strength to run. He stared at his brother, willing Sam to move. To breathe. To show some sign of life. Anything. Any reason to keep fighting.

Then Sam moved. One hand fisted at the sand and the muscles across his back rippled, subtly shifted the coiled rope. It was all he did, then he fell still again, his body shuddering weakly.

Dean released a breath and raised his arms, his injured wrist throbbing dully. "Come and get me, you sadistic sons of bitches." He turned and sprinted, barreling around the corner and back into the door of the jail. The dead men followed, moving swiftly, faster than Dean.

They caught him at the cell, slammed him against the bars and dropped him to the floor. Blood filled his mouth, burned his nostrils and unconsciousness momentarily blackened his mind.

He shook it off, scraped himself along the floor and grasped the fallen pocket watch. Tom launched a kick to his stomach, and Dean rolled, facing the bars, the watch clutched in his hand.

Another kick, hard into his back, and pain lashed through his kidneys. Dazed, he smashed the watch against the cell bars, cracking the face and distorting the metal. Again, and again. He endured two more kicks to his back before the watch lay in pieces on the cell floor, and he beside it. Brad had retreated to the far corner of the cell, his hands over his face, gibbering stupidly.

The dead men didn't vanish. Didn't disappear in an anti-climactic rush of compressed air. He had guessed as much, but he was desperate and out of time, and… what the hell, it was worth a try.

He grunted as they pulled him upright and half carried, half dragged him back outside. They threw him next to his brother, and Dean reached out to his sibling with a shaky, bloodied hand.

"Sam."

Sam's eyes were open, half slits, his mouth wide, his face discolored. His back shuddered and his eyes widened, glazed and dilated. There was no recognition there, just raw panic

Conrad loosened the noose from Sam's neck, jerked it free and shoved him aside. The action rolled Sam onto his back, his face toward Dean, his eyes open, mouth wide. Tears wet his face. Dean pushed to his knees, swiped Conrad aside and clambered to his brother. He fell beside him.

"Sammy?"

But he knew. He knew without touching. Sam wasn't breathing. He wasn't getting any air. His throat had closed up.

"No! Sam, no!"

Conrad pulled Dean away, and Tom held him as they slipped the noose around his neck. He punched at them, clawed and fought. Still fighting even as they got him upright and started dragging him toward the gallows.

"Sam!"

No response. Nothing. Sam's eyes slipped closed and his body loosened, relaxed.

Dean screamed, lashing out in fury and grief. Conrad let him go. Then Tom. Dean collapsed, unprepared for the sudden release. He landed hard on his knees, and splayed out one hand to protect his injured wrist. Gasping, he watched as the dead men shimmered, hologram-like. Their faces, pale and ghostly, twisted and morphed. They stared at each other, their expressions a mix of horror and relief. Then they vanished. No noise, mess of rotting innards and messy implosions… just gone.

On the ground, where the two men had been, lay two gold watches.

Understanding slammed into him, and he pulled clear of the noose, staggered to his brother and fell beside him. He understood more than he ever wanted to. They had exacted their revenge, killed the man they believed had caused them so much pain. And Sam's death had freed their souls.

He refused to accept it.

Dean rolled his brother, arranged his limbs into the recovery position. His vision faded in and out as Sam's head lolled, his broken arm flopped, and his face, bloodied and swollen, had relaxed. His lips had a blue tint… and the air hung with the smell of urine.

The sphincter muscles relax at the moment of death.

"Sammy, don't do this. Don't. Please."

He caught Sam's uninjured arm, pressed his forefinger to the pulse point and searched for a miracle.

Logically, it was a pointless exercise. The spirits had recognized the moment of Sam's death, and in sensing it, had relinquished their earthly hold.

If Sam's heart had stopped, there was nothing he could do to get him back. CPR would be pointless, though he would try. He would, because he never gave up. Not on Sam. Not ever. But he wasn't an idiot either. Maybe with the proper equipment, with medical help on standby….

Dean slouched over his brother, his fingers holding Sam's wrist, and stared at the buttons on the younger man's shirt. Small ivory colored circles, thread knotted between tiny holes. Each splattered and smeared with blood. Sam's blood. His kid brother, his Sam.

Sensation fluttered against Dean's fingertips. Shocked, Dean pressed harder, confirming the sensation. It made no sense. Sam should be dead. Should be… but wasn't. Not technically. Not yet.

Dean began mouth to mouth, knowing that if he could get Sam's breathing up, he might have a chance. The first set had him stop. Sam's chest didn't rise.

He touched at Sam's throat, felt abrasions and heat. Sam had been conscious when Dean had shot the rope down, which meant his muscles hadn't relaxed. It had been Dean's greatest fear, that Sam would lose consciousness while suspended. The loss of conscious muscle control would leave his airway and arteries vulnerable to massive structural damage as the rope cut into this throat. Very few people survived after suffering a crushed trachea, or if they did, then not for long and definitely not in the desert, miles away from help.

But Sam hadn't lost consciousness, at least not until he was down. Yet, he wasn't breathing. Had his windpipe been crushed after all?

Dean fell back on his heels, helpless and panicked. His hands burned cold, his lungs rattled and grief threatened to strangle the life out of him. He didn't know what to do. Just had no clue and his vision turned to liquid.

A shadow fell over them as Brad dropped to his knees, his arms hugged around himself. He rocked, the picture of misery, evidently knowing he had done this. Dean abruptly stood, crossed to the man and punched him in the face. Brad went down with a sharp cry, his nose spewing blood.

Dean's muscles, iron rods of tortured regret, locked his arms at his sides. He turned stiffly and stared down at his brother.

"You got a knife?" he bit out suddenly.

Brad nursed his bloodied nose and stared stupidly.

"A knife. Switchblade. Razor, something sharp." Dean fell to his brother's side, tipped Sam's head back and felt through the swelling for the corrugated ridges of the younger man's windpipe. "Brad, now!"

Brad fumbled in his pockets and produced a Swiss Army knife. His hand shook as he passed it over.

"Now a pen, tubing, something thin and hollow."

"I don't—"

"Find something!"

"What are you going to do?"

Dean steadied his hands and splayed them, finger wide, on the span of Sam's upper chest. His thumb nudged Sam's pulse point, encouraged to find a weak tremor.

"Hang on, Sammy. Just hang on."

Dean flipped open the blade. His stomach churned and his hand shook. "Brad, don't fucking stand there. Move!"

"I don't have anything."

"Oh yeah you do, or else I'll slice your head from your shoulders and leave your mangled corpse for the buzzards." Dean glanced at the man, his pulse racing. "It needs to be thin, hollow, like a…."

Memory shoved forward, and an image of Brad sucking beer through a straw seared Dean's synapses. His tongue tangled in the haste to communicate. "Straw. Get your fucking straw."

"Straw?"

"The beer you were drinking." Dean jerked a thumb toward the saloon. "In there. Go. Go!"

Brad dithered for a second, then took off, one hand at his nose, the other pumping air. Dust sprang from his heels and then sound thumped as he ran into the saloon.

Dean momentarily closed his eyes, took a deep breath and set the knife, tip edge down, at the dip beneath Sam's Adam's apple. There was no way to sterilize the blade, and no time even if he had a method. Hot desert sand whipped at his face, and toyed with Sam's hair.

"You're going to be okay. Stay with me. Don't give up."

The blade sank in, raising blood in a shallow line. It hit resistance, the plastic-like sheath that formed Sam's windpipe. Dean sucked in a breath and exerted a fraction more pressure. Then a little more until the blade slid through.

Brad catapulted from the saloon, thudded across the verandah and out into the street. He sprinted the distance and presented Dean with a thin blue straw, his face sweaty and red. "Here. Will it… is he?"

"Clam it." Dean withdrew the knife and rested it on Sam's chest. He gripped the straw carefully, maneuvering it to slip into the thin slot he had made. Blood slicked his fingers and his hand shook, but the straw went in.

He expected a response, some immediate indication that he had made a difference. But he got nothing. Sam lay as still and deathly quiet as before. And no breath sounds whistled from the tube.

Dean set to work on breathing for his brother, pushing air through the straw and into Sam's lungs. Brad started pacing, agitatedly kicking up dust and making vague distressed sounds. Muttering as well. Dean tuned him out.

Thirty seconds, forty... fifty. Hope faltered. Unless Sam started breathing on his own, the likelihood of keeping him alive for the sixty mile drive into town….

Sam's hand twitched and his chest rose. Shallow at first, unsteady and unpredictable, but then it evened out. Dean blinked tears, his sinuses clogged. "There you go. That's my boy."

Dean accepted Brad's assistance to get Sam to the Impala, but he didn't trust Brad to drive, and didn't trust him with Sam's life, so he personally multi-tasked. Brad in the back-seat, Sam folded in the front, his head on Dean's thigh, a blanket behind his back to keep his neck level and the tube in place.

He almost drove off the road four times, and Brad squawked from the backseat that he could drive. But Brad had invited them into the desert, separated him from his brother and allowed two dead men to torture Sam and then to lynch him. Brad driving was just not an option, and Dean fought unconsciousness for the entire forty minutes that it took to get back into town.

The hospital accepted Sam's limp body, made comments about the tracheotomy and condemned with their curious eyes. Dean stumbled through the sign-in, screwed up the names, the cards, the insurance, and settled on Winchester and all the cash in his pocket. It was all he could remember, and it wouldn't be enough.

Sam wouldn't die under a stranger's name.

Sam wouldn't die at all.

Dean's teeth chattered and his boots clattered against the linoleum floor. He found a chair in the waiting room and sank into it, buried his face in his hands and gouged the palms into his eye sockets until he no longer saw his brother's face: beaten, bloodied, damaged so badly that it no longer looked like Sam.

He refused treatment and ignored the nurse who apparently had been assigned to the waiting room to keep an eye on him. His lower back cramped and ached, so badly he couldn't sit still, couldn't sit at all. So he kept moving, cradling his throbbing wrist and flaking dried blood all over the linoleum floor.

Brad loitered in the waiting room for over an hour, refused treatment for his nose and crossed several times to the telephone on the wall before he finally lifted it and called someone. Dean stared numbly, listening without hearing, and a while after that Brad left.

The clock ticked. People came and went. Dean waited, and the blood on his clothes dried and flaked, his muscles cramped, his lower back ached so badly that he wanted to scream, and he seriously considered cutting off his wrist just to make the pain stop. But he didn't, he endured it because it was all he could do.

Doctor Parkens, thirty something with a lisp and an odd looking hairstyle that framed her face and made her look like a river bloated mammal corpse, came to see him around an hour later. She gestured for him to sit, but Dean couldn't because it all hurt so badly. Instead, he leaned against the wall and stared sullenly at her.

"You need medical treatment, Mr Winchester."

"How's Sam?"

She sighed, took a seat and started to explain his brother's condition. She spoke gently and in detail, but Dean frosted over it and made a list in his mind: severe and extensive bruising, contusions, fractures to the ribs, right forearm, cheekbone and nose, cerebral edema, peritoneal trauma, hypotension, bruised kidneys, scrotum—

"What?"

The woman's gaze softened. "There's no evidence of sexual trauma, just the bruising. He must have been hit in the groin area. It's not serious."

Dean dug his fingers into his thighs. The room tilted and spun and he tasted blood in his mouth. "Is that all?"

She reached out, a gesture of sympathy and support, but Dean drew the limb back as though burned.

"Is that all?"

"Sam endured a complete hanging, that is, he was suspended with his feet unable to touch the ground."

Dean clenched his jaw, the remembered image threatening to completely undo him. "I… I checked his neck. It wasn't broken."

"No, the height of the drop and force placed on the neck determines how much injury occurs. You said Sam was suspended with one to two feet clearance."

"Yes."

"If he had been dropped from that height, it would asphyxiate, not compromise his spinal cord and skull."

Dean stared down at his hands. They were shaking. "He stopped breathing."

"Yes." She hesitated, then added. "The field tracheotomy restored his respiration. It saved his life."

Dean felt cold. Chilled from the inside out. "But." He looked up and met her gaze. "I hear the 'but'."

She smiled thinly. "Hanging injuries are difficult. The neck is a delicate structure, the placement of the rope, force, angle… the duration of unconsciousness."

"Will he recover?" Dean said harshly. "Or should I have left him out there?"

She winced and shook her head. "No, but we need to be cautious. We don't know his capacity for a full recovery until he wakes."

"Really? The look on your face and your tone say otherwise. Give it to me straight, is he brain damaged?"

"It's too early to say."

"Five days from now, will Sam be conscious, will he be talking? Read the crystal ball, what does it say?"

"Mr Winchester—"

Dean lurched away from the wall, the sudden shift sending his heart into a frantic palpitation. He braced against it, swaying. "Five days. Spell it out. Now."

"You need to sit down."

"No! They beat him, hung him. They… they…."

"Dean, please." She touched his arm.

"He's going to die," Dean said. He backpedaled, banging into chairs, attracting attention. A maniacal laugh erupted from his throat and his vision blurred. "It's why they disappeared. They knew… they knew what they'd done, that there was no hope. They knew."

She was looking at him with the eyes of a sane person dealing with a madman. "Mr Winchester."

Dean backed into the wall, splayed his hands out palm flat against it. Slid down, knees to chin, his limbs trembling. "He's all I got. Don't play with me. I need to know, I need to know now."

"I can't make you any promises. I'm sorry, I just can't."

"Can't, or won't," he said as she shimmered before him, becoming watery and unclear. His sinuses burned and he couldn't breathe right.

"He's in surgery for the abdominal injuries. Once those are repaired, he will be transferred to ICU and later, when he's gained some strength, he'll be scheduled for reconstructive surgery for his face." She paused and her voice softened. "You aren't helping him by refusing treatment for yourself. When he wakes, he will need you."

"I will accept treatment when I know my brother is okay." Dean scrubbed at his face, and raised his head, jostling the pain around in his skull. "Not a moment before. Do you understand me?"

An orderly appeared at the waiting room door. A second nudged up behind him. Doctor Parkens glanced at them, then offered a sympathetic smile. "Without treatment, Dean, you won't be around when your brother wakes."

"Bullshit." Dean jerked upright, pushed off from the wall and started moving again. They watched him, waiting, like a hunter stalking injured prey – waiting for the moment it falls.

"I need to see him."

"You can't. Not yet. When he's in ICU, you'll be allowed to sit with him."

"Then I'll wait outside ICU. Where is it?" He started toward the door, collapsed partway there, pain drilling him into the floor. He groaned, clenched his jaw and struggled to stand. Darkness mocked him, made light of his protectiveness… of his vow to keep Sam safe.

"Let us help you."

The words buzzed and sizzled, scouring through his mind. "No. I need… to save… Sam."

He blacked out, self-disgust hammering him to the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: If you survived last chapter with no ill effects, then this one will be a cakewalk. To everyone who is reviewing. Thank you so very much. I am working to catch up on reviews, but given that the site is still not sending them on you won't be receiving them yet anyway. Please know that every review means a lot, and is greatly appreciated!  
_

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Six)**

Five days. It had been five days. It felt like five long hard miserable years, with no end in sight. As he looked at his brother, at the haggard creases, the stubble that came closer to a beard, and the charcoal smudges under his eyes, he saw the suffering reflected back at him.

"You look like shit," Sam said huskily. He winced at the tight pull across his cheek, the draw of newly stitched flesh beneath heavy gauze. It made him sick just thinking about it. So he didn't, he watched his brother instead.

"I'm fine. Bruised kidneys and a broken wrist can't keep me down."

Sam considered that, thought about correcting his brother and adding the head injury, the extensive bruising, the lacerated kidney – and the emergency surgery to save Dean's life when stubbornness had seen him refuse treatment – but he couldn't muster the energy.

"How are you doing?" Dean said.

Sam's mouth pulled down and he lowered his gaze. Everything hurt. His throat, arm, every inch of his body bore bruises and he couldn't move an inch without pain searing through his abdomen. The drugs made him nauseous and tired, and his brain hurt – emotions, a roller coaster of anxiety, sadness, anger. He listlessly picked at the cotton blanket with one hand.

"Not so good, huh?" Dean leaned across and grabbed the remote for the television. "How about some daytime television to really hammer home the torment."

Sam half smiled at that and shrugged one shoulder. He eyed his brother, a multitude of questions barreling around in his head. None surfaced, he just let them whiz around and around, bashing against his skull until he felt like hurling.

The doctor had explained his condition in gruesome, technical detail, and the rawness of it convinced him that he should have died. The promise of a full recovery held a ring of bitter falseness. He had been tortured in retribution for the deaths of three people, the torment of the souls of two others. His death would have been fair penance. Escaping that seemed unjust: an upset to the natural order of things. And Sam waited for the world to right itself. For evil to come collecting its dues: seeking suffering, blood… his soul. And it would. Sam knew it would. It was just a matter of time.

The television switched on, turned up too loud – a sudden burst of gunfire – and Sam flinched, gasping at the sudden pain. He shut his eyes and pressed his head back against the pillow, sucking breath between his teeth. 

"Damn thing," Dean muttered, his voice quavering. The sound shut off a moment later. "What moron has the freakin' television volume up that high?"

"You," Sam said. He cracked his eyes open and tried valiantly to look less like animated road-kill. Dean's fearful expression warned him that he wasn't doing such a great job.

"Where's Brad?" he ventured a moment later.

"Don't know. Don't care." Dean's voice took on a crisp edge. "The son of a bitch has shut down his website, that's all I care about."

Sam raised an eyebrow in question.

"Nurse Sondra, the red-head, let me use her computer. He's closed down the site, put up a notice to say that all visitors will be turned away." Dean shifted on the seat, leaning forward, his broken wrist resting on one thigh. His expression grew taut for a moment, a flash of pain, then the stoic mask shifted into place and Dean sneered. "It's about the only vaguely honorable thing the bastard has done."

Sam dropped his gaze, his good hand coming up to his throat. It was an instinctual gesture, and his fingers caressed the gauze that covered the wound just below his Adam's apple. He didn't remember Dean cutting into his throat so he could breathe. Couldn't imagine having to do that. But he did remember the intubation: a tube connected to a port in his neck because his throat was so badly swollen and bruised that they couldn't get a tube down it. He had been terrified that he might stay that way, be fitted with a prosthesis and left to talk through a synthesized voice box. But the swelling had gone down, and the tube came out, leaving a hole and the promise of a knotted little scar. Another to add to the growing collection.

He lifted his gaze to the window, to the crisp sunlight, the cotton clouds, the rooftops beyond the hospital grounds. Exhaustion gnawed at his muscles, made it hard to breathe. Oddly enough, he craved the ventilator, the work it had done for him, once he had gotten used to the pattern and the terror of having no voice, he had just laid there in a semi-drugged stupor, the machine breathing for him.

"It'll get easier as you regain your strength."

He glanced at his brother, then looked away again. Would it get easier? Would any of it?

"None of it was your fault. You know that, right?"

He nodded without thought, his focus locked on the view outside. He felt Dean watching him, waiting for something more solid, more convincing.

"They're at peace now, aren't they?" Sam eventually said, his voice thick and unsure.

"Who?"

"Conrad and Tom. They're not suffering anymore?"

Dean clenched his jaw. "I don't much care."

"I do. Bevins, he… what he did, it was—"

"Torture."

Sam nodded and chewed on his lower lip. He swallowed, grimacing.

"They tortured you, Sam. Eye for an eye, it was barbaric. There's no justification for that."

"You broke Brad's nose. As payback."

Dean studied him, his eyes narrowed. "You need to rest. You look ready to pass out."

He felt it too, but he pinched his hand into a fist and shook his head. "Was it… did they pick me because…"

"It had nothing to do with your abilities." Dean leaned in closer, his hand folded around Sam's wrist at the pulse point. The machine beside the bed ratcheted out Sam's vitals in little blips, lines and flashing numbers. Any dramatic change would bring nurses running, yet Dean still checked his pulse the old fashioned way.

Sam closed his eyes, turned his head away, suddenly overcome with emotion. Tears burned his eyes and he tugged his wrist free and rested it across his abdomen. The additional weight hurt, but he figured Dean wouldn't reach for him there.

And Dean didn't. He withdrew, but didn't leave. And neither did he speak. Sam was thankful for that, and soon he drifted, losing himself to the dulled pain.

Sleep must have come soon after, because he woke to darkness. Disoriented, he blinked and tried to make sense of the lack of light. It shouldn't be entirely dark like this. Yet it was. Dark. Too dark.

And cold. Icily so.

Someone was with him. Close. Breathing heavily. Sam startled upright, expecting pain, but feeling very little. He rolled out of the bed, padded across to the door and rested his hand on the handle. Cold wafted over his shoulders, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

"Who's there?" He tried the door. Found it locked from the outside.

No way out.

"Ever seen a chicken with it's head cut off?"

Conrad. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. The grating harshness of it, the awful, dead-flat timbre. Sam swung around, breathing hard. A silhouette filled the window, the tall, broad form of a man. Sam flattened his back against the door, the handle grasped in one sweaty hand.

He had to be dreaming. It had to be a dream. Pain erupted in his leg and he grunted, reaching for it, his fumbling fingers coming in contact with a knife embedded in the meat of his right thigh.

"You got away once, you won't again."

Frigid air wrapped around Sam, shouldered him to the floor and pinned him there. The knife twisted in his thigh, ripping a scream from his throat. Loud and hoarse, real. Too real.

Then the cold fled, light burned and voices rushed in, around him, washing heat and cold through his body. Sam lay amongst it, his teeth chattering, his eyes restlessly shifting. Blood leaked between the fingers of his left hand in hot, gushing spurts.

"He's severed the femoral. Get a gurney in here."

Pressure bore down on the wound and Sam arched against it, a strangled cry torn from him.

"What happened? Oh no! Who did this?"

Sam stared dully at Doctor Parkens' shiny red shoes, pointy heels, dainty feet. She lisped her distress, coming down to his height to touch at his face. "Stay with us, Sam. We'll get you fixed up."

"Dean?"

"Yes, I know. We'll tell your brother. It'll be okay."

"Tell him. Conrad not… gone," Sam said as consciousness rapidly decayed in chunks. Then he was gone, the doctor's frantic voice snatched away.

Sam woke to a dark room. The only illumination from outside, in the hallway. He startled upright, grunting and falling back as pain weakened him.

"Sam, you're okay. It's okay."

"Dean?"

"Breathe, slow and easy."

Sam's breath hitched, the memories all too real, the pain too intense. He reached for his brother, caught Dean's uninjured hand and clutched it tight. Words lay trapped in his chest, the emotions too brittle.

"Can you sit up?"

"No."

"You have to." Dean glanced toward the door. "We're going on a little excursion."

"Conrad?"

"Yeah, it's time to burn the bastard."

Sam bit his lip, shaking now. "It wasn't a dream?"

"No." Dean pushed the sheets back, and exposed a bandage wrapped around Sam's upper right thigh. Blood had stained some of it. Dark rust patches against the white. Pain, memory and real, rushed in and Sam's stomach heaved.

He threw up over the edge of the bed, splattering liquid over the sheets and floor. Dean fell quiet, his hand warm against Sam's back. When it was over, Sam slumped against his brother, his eyes closed, his chin on Dean's shoulder.

"I can't leave you here," Dean said, the words rumbling through his chest. "They got you once, and they'll be back."

"Just… Conrad." Sam opened his eyes. The room tipped and wavered. Drugs, blood loss, or pain. He wasn't sure, didn't really understand any of it.

"I can't protect you here and I can't leave you."

"You're… hurt too."

"I'm fine."

It was a lie, but Sam had no energy to argue. He shakily pushed away from Dean, tugged the IV lines from the ports in his hand and raised his head. "What's… the plan?"

Dean looked sick, petrified and anguished. He raked his gaze up and down, taking in Sam's obviously less than healthy appearance. Sam forced a grin. "Looks… worse….." He bit his lip, closing his eyes against another wave of nausea.

Who the hell was he kidding?

"When this is over, you'll be coming right back here." Dean's voice shook, breaking on the last syllables. "You just have to stay in the Impala. You'll be fine, and it'll all be over before you know it.

It was never fine. And it would never be over.

Sam clutched at Dean's back as the older man hefted him from the bed and settled him into a wheelchair. The movement rattled him, drove pain through his abdomen and thigh and he shuddered, his muscles cramping against the shock of it. He felt Dean beside him, felt him touching at his face, but Sam couldn't respond, couldn't make sense of what his brother was saying. It sounded like Dean might be crying.

Dean didn't cry. Not unless it was really bad. But then, this was bad. Dead guys hunting them down. Didn't get much worse than that really.

Dean tucked a blanket around him, gentle around his thigh, even more gently around his stomach. Sam tried to help, but Dean batted him away.

"Just keep breathing, Sammy." He looked up and smiled, a forced, sad expression that aged him. "I'll make this right."

As Dean wheeled him through the hospital, smiled disarmingly at nurses and nodded authoritatively at doctors, Sam struggled just to remain upright. His abdominal muscles had been pounded – shredded – and breathing hurt, let alone sitting upright in a moving chair. By the time they had reached the car, Sam had almost clear bitten through his lip to keep from sobbing.

Getting into the car was a whole new form of torture that Sam never, ever, ever wanted to repeat. Except he would have to. Because, unless he planned to spend the next week in the car, at some point he would have to get out of it.

Maybe they could drug him for that. He pondered that as he watched Dean push the wheelchair to the side, nosed in behind a tree, hidden from view. Ready for next time. Great. Just great.

Dean hurried around the side of the car and slid into the driver's seat. Sam closed his eyes, wheezing shallow inhalations between clenched teeth.

"Sam."

Sam groaned and longed for unconsciousness, sedation – anything but this pain.

"This will help."

Something warm settled in his lap and Sam touched at it, fumbling to try to make sense of what it was.

"Heat pack. Hold it like this." Sam's fingers were gently pried apart, then closed around the radiant warmth. "Put it against your chest, you need to keep your core body temp up. There's another one for under each arm. Keep them under the blankets."

"Sounds… good." His teeth were chattering and it seemed as though a meat axe had cleaved through his thigh, right to the bone, and now was slowly being sawn back and forth across the nerves. His face, fractured arm and torso ached with less intensity, but no less determination.

If Conrad didn't kill him, shock and pain sure as hell would.

Then they were moving, easing through the hospital car park and out into the street. Dean set the heaters up high, blasting heat into the cab as night flashed by outside. Sam trembled, his teeth clamped tight against the pain, the cold, the hell of it all. Gradually the heat soothed him, loosened his muscles and made him soggy limbed. His head rested against the window, his eyes closed, soothed by the throbbing engine and gentle vibration. He must have fallen asleep, because he woke to near silence, just the sound of breathing.

"Dean?" Panic laced his voice, made him twist in the seat as he searched the darkness for his brother.

"Shh, I'm here."

Sam blinked, trying to see, relaxing as he took in his brother's form in the driver's seat.

"We're at the cemetery, two miles from the ghost town," Dean said.

"It's dark."

"Yeah." Dean shifted in the seat, a rustle of denim against leather. "It'll be light enough soon. You warm enough?"

"Hmm."

Dean hesitated, then leaned across and touched at the side of Sam's neck. "Your heart-rate's up. Try to relax."

"Kinda… hard."

"Yeah. True. But try anyway."

Light filtered over the cab and touched a ghostly hand to the dash.

"It's Brad," Dean said before Sam could ask. "I can't dig by myself and that bastard owes us."

Sam clutched at the blankets and hugged them closer. "Can you… trust him?"

"Have to."

"But…."

"I smashed the watch. Broke the connection that held him to the spirits." Dean shrugged and watched the headlights approach. "Having him help us is the lesser of two evils really."

The SUV pulled in beside them, kicking up dust in a swirled haze. The headlights flicked off and blackness reigned until Sam's eyes adjusted to the moonlight. Two men hopped from the cab. Brad, and another man. A stranger. For a moment Sam thought it was Conrad, and he tensed, stifling a gasp as pain ripped through his body.

Dean glanced at him, then looked away. He rolled down the window.

"You know which one is the right grave?"

"It's over by the south side. Buried beside his family," Brad said.

"You got the pocket watches?"

"Yeah."

"Go to the grave, I'll bring the car around."

"You can't drive closer, there's no track and you'll get bogged in the sand."

Sam listened, blinking heavily. He saw Dean turn to him. "Then you two dig, I'll stay with Sam."

Brad leaned down and peered into the car. He withdrew almost immediately and his tone changed, grew deeper, pained even. "Damn, when will this end?"

"When that son of a bitch is properly dead," Dean said. He wound up the window and shoved open the car door and a blast of cold air made Sam turn his face away. The door slammed shut, and Sam was alone. His ears rang in the silence. Outside the car, Dean walked to the trunk, opened it and retrieved something. The other two men did the same.

Sam clutched at the blankets and turned so he could see Dean through the windows. The men met at the front of the SUV, their voices muted by the metal and glass. With the engine off, heat dissipated quickly and Sam eyed the heating vents with longing. The heat packs against his chest and sides helped immeasurably, but his feet and legs felt the chill, and the wound on his face ached.

Gauze covered a large portion of the left side of his face. The broken flesh stitched tight, the bone underneath set and healing. It would scar, but minimally, so the surgeon had said. A fine long line. He wondered how that could be so. The bar had cleaved his cheek open, or at least it felt like it had. He hadn't actually seen the wound.

Brad and the second man moved into the graveyard. Dean returned to the car. Popped the door and slid in. He started the engine with a quick glance, and set the heaters on soon after. Sam could have hugged him, kissed him, done any number of horrifically chick flick gestures of appreciation. But of course he didn't, just snuggled into the blankets and watched the stars outside.

"It shouldn't take them any more than an hour. Then I'll go salt and burn and it'll all be over."

"Easy," Sam murmured.

"Yeah. Easy." Dean reached into the back seat and withdrew a shotgun. "Can you handle this?"

Sam stared dumbly.

"When they're done digging, I'll have to go over there."

"I'll be okay."

"With a shotgun you will be. Can you handle it?"

"In the car?"

"Yes."

"I guess."

"Don't guess, are you sure?"

No, of course he wasn't, how the hell could he maneuver a shotgun in the cab of the car? "Yeah, I'm sure."

Dean nodded, primed the shotgun and retrieved a second one from the backseat. He got that one ready too, and then lay both on the seat between them.

"Sleep if you can. I'll wake you when they're done digging."

"'kay." Sam rested his head against the window, the heat soothing his mind and relaxing his muscles. He drifted, not quite asleep, but definitely not awake. Might have even dozed off, and soon Dean was nudging him awake.

"They're done. Take this."

Sam stared at the shotgun that was thrust at him. Dean's expression grew pained, and he reached across the tugged the blankets to clear a path for Sam's hands. "Can you do this?"

"Yeah." Sam fumbled for the weapon, the metal cold against his fingers. His hands shook, badly, and he could feel his pulse drumming in his skull.

Dean watched him carefully, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other clasping the second shotgun. "I'll be ten minutes. No more. Will you be okay?"

As long as dead Conrad didn't show up, sure, Sam would be peachy. He nodded, his thigh cramping and flesh crawling. "Go. I'll be fine."

Famous last words, he thought.

Dean hesitated. "I can get them to do it."

"They won't know how." That much was true. A salt and burn wasn't just throw on some salt, some accelerant and toss in a match. All the remains had to be unearthed and burned. Years of digging up skeletons had made it an art form.

"Lock the doors, and don't let anyone in but me. Not even Brad and his buddy. And if I don't come back, you haul ass out of here." Dean killed the engine, handed him the keys and closed Sam's fingers over them. "You got that?"

Sam nodded, knowing he would do no such thing. If Dean didn't come back, he would crawl through hell to find him. Dean knew it too, because he smiled thinly, then was gone. Out of the car so quickly that Sam barely even felt the whip of cold. Sam watched his brother stoop to collect the accelerant, then run into the graveyard. The darkness swallowed him up.

Alone.

Sam was alone.

The engine off, the keys in one hand, a shotgun in the other. Cold moved in, curling around his toes, hugging his shins, sliding upwards to chill and control.

He didn't register the shift from chill to frigid iciness until it was too late. Frost laced the windows, turned his breath into fog and startled a moan from him.

Dean had been gone less than five minutes. Not long enough to have salted and burned, but still ample enough time for Conrad to take Sam out.

The dead man was in the car. In the back seat. Behind Sam. Breathing hard, deeply. Sam clenched the shotgun, his attention rigidly fixed on the frosted view beyond the windscreen – where his brother had gone.

"Ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?" Conrad said. There was a haughty mocking in the tone, a self-congratulatory jeer.

"Yeah, I have," Sam said. He twisted in the seat, raised the shotgun and fired.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Well here it is, the final chapter. My apologies for the horrendous delay, I have no worthy excuse so I won't bother with giving you one. As always, my sincerest thanks go to A-Blackwinged-Bird for giving me insight and guidance, and Kaewi for her gentle and persistent nudging to get this story finished. You got me moving, now I hope you're not too disappointed. _

_To everyone who read, especially those who left reviews, thank you! And, because I just can't help it: woot-woot for season three, and for the events of the season final. Awesome on many levels! Now on with the fic.  
_

**GUNSLINGER (Chapter Seven)**

Dean heard a shotgun blast. Muted to a sodden whoomph, the muzzle-fire an accompanying flare that corrupted the darkness at the corner of his eye. His pulse stammered and cold licked his bones.

"What was that?" Brad stepped backward, fear making his eyes go wide. His friend followed suit, drawing a haphazard retreat that near ended him up on his ass in the grave.

The last of the salt went in, the accelerant after it. Empty eye sockets leered up at him, framed by a derelict skull. No solid brain mass in there now, nothing but air and dirt. Still, it was too damned much.

Silence wrapped him in a death shroud and his hands shook as he lit the match, tossed it into the grave. Another sodden whoomph: tiny flame to fire, and Dean wheeled and ran. Across moonlit ground, stars beveled in the night sky, the sound of fire behind him and the specter of death in front.

Conrad had attacked Sam. Dean figured out how. The spirit would have wrenched the shotgun from his brother and shot him point blank with a salt round. That wouldn't bode well for a man with no existing injuries, but for Sam – already gravely wounded – it meant death.

Dean should never have left his injured brother alone – should never have risked it.

Aching lungs made every breath burn in his chest, denied him oxygen to call his brother's name. The Impala, headlights as dual condemning eyes, observed his frantic dash, then watched with calm trepidation as he fell, slammed to the ground by a false step. His ankle flared, firing white hot pain up his shin like the flames that sucked oxygen from the grave behind him. No way Conrad was still with Sam now. The ignition would have sucked the dead gunslinger back – ended him.

"Sam!" It came out as a tortured whisper, but it got him moving again. Pain bladed his ankle, made him favor one side, but it did not slow him down. He reached the car, slammed hard into the driver's side door and grappled at the door handle. "Sammy, open up."

Frost coated the windows, obscured a view of the interior of the car. Worse than the night he had gotten lucky with Janine, the red-headed waitress from Oscar's Diner in Keyhole, Nebraska. They had drawn lurid images on the windows of the car in their post-coital inebriation, and Dean had been too endorphin drunk to realize that they'd show up next time the car's windows frosted up.

His father did though, and his reaction had been both frightening and funny. There was absolutely nothing funny about this situation.

Dean leapt across the hood and half slid, half fell to the passenger side door. "Sam!"

He scanned for a boulder, a hunk of debris, for something hard enough to smash through the glass. His attention jerked back by the sound of the door lock disengaging.

Dean ripped open the door. Sam sat sideways in the seat, the shotgun loose in his grip, blankets shucked off his shoulders. Sam was shaking, trembling, and his head was bowed, making it impossible to see his face.

"Where'd he get you? What did he do?" Dean dropped to his knees, flattened one hand against Sam's chest, the other around his brother's wrist and ducked his head in the car to check the back-seat, but it was too dark to see and the interior light had blown. Sam's pulse hammered wildly, and his skin had a slick cold feel.

"Sammy, talk to me. Where are you hurt?"

Sam's head came up with a lethargic pull. His eyes were shut. "Didn't."

"Didn't what?" Dean pinned Sam against the seat, pushed the blankets aside and fumbled in search of blood, of fresh wounds. Expected to find pellet peppered flesh, the hospital gown blood soaked. But it wasn't.

Sam breathed shallowly, carefully, and his head dipped. He caught it and straightened, hissing as he moved. Dean caught sight of a pattern of red on Sam's right side, against his forearm. He nudged the limb to the side and sucked in a breath. A blood stain, tennis ball size, fingered outwards from a central point to form a gory scarlet sea-star just above Sam's right hip.

"Didn't get me," Sam said. He set cold fingers around Dean's forearm and pushed away. Let go and reached out, trying to grab something that lay beyond his weak stretch. Moaned and flopped back, misery etched on his face. "Cold. Please, hurts."

Blankets tangled in a pool at Dean's knees, on the desert sand. He scooped them up, covered his brother's bare legs. "You're bleeding," Dean said. "Is this where he hit you?"

Sam snagged the blankets and tugged them higher. His fingers, white and shaking, knotted into the wool. "No, I shot him."

Frost melted off the windows, letting in weak light from outside the car. Dean scanned the back seat. Salt pocked the leather, gouged craters to reveal blistered foam. Bits of it lay splattered across the seat, stuck to the windows.

"You shot him?" Dean glanced at his brother and saw a spark of repentant anguish in the younger man's eyes.

"I'll pay to have it fixed."

Dean understood. The blood stain now revealed itself as pulled stitches, newly sutured wounds ripped open when Sam had twisted in the seat and fired. Even grievously injured, barely over an hour after waking after surgery for a knife wound to his thigh, and drugged to the gills by pain and drugs, Sam had blasted Conrad's spirit with rock salt.

Oh yeah, Sam was a Winchester alright – through and through. The pride that swelled threatened to strangle Dean, but he swallowed it down and kept his expression neutral.

"Damn straight you're paying," he said. "You know how much that'll cost. That was original interior, straight off the factory floor. Cost a mint to replace."

He pulled the blankets higher, set the heat packs back in place, well away from the blood stain. Checked the wound again but the stain was not increasing in size. When he had Sam bundled up, he touched at his brother's neck to check his pulse. Sam watched in silence, wearing an exhausted, pain drawn expression that warned of depleted reserves: of a man pushed too hard, too fast, for too long. It was Sam's permanent expression now, just never quite as raw as this.

"It's over. You did good." He paused, and added, "the window would've been harder to replace. You're still paying for it though. Next time, draw the bastard out of the car first."

He grinned, letting his brother know he was joking, but Sam just blinked and looked away.

Dean retrieved the keys, closed the door and hobbled around the car. His ankle ached, and driving would be an exercise in endurance, but he had suffered worse, and recently too. Pain at his back reminded him of how bad it had been. How close it had come – of how strong his little brother was. He pushed away the thoughts of what might be coming, of how strong Sam would need to be to fight it. It just didn't bear thinking about.

"I know where Bevins is," Sam said when Dean slid into the driver's seat, started the engine and flipped on the heating.

"Where?"

Brad and his buddy walked toward the car. They carried shovels and the empty can of accelerant, matches too probably, but Dean couldn't see.

"The ghost town."

Dean glanced at his brother then wound down the window. "Throw those in the trunk."

"Is it over?" Brad flexed fingers over the shovel handle, gripping so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Yeah," Dean said. He tensed to wind up the window.

"No," Sam said. He looked like an overgrown, tousled headed kid tucked up in blankets after a big day out, but the intensity of his expression broke the image. "We have to destroy the ghost town."

"What?" Brad took a step back, his hand blister hard around the shovel handle. "The ghosts are gone, it's over. You said so."

And Dean had. He waved a hand at the two men. "Toss those in the trunk and give us a minute." He turned to Sam. "We need to leave, you're bleeding and—"

"A game of chicken is when two sides face off and neither will back down."

"I know what it is. I played it with that possessed truck that was after Cassie." Dean set his hand on the window winder.

"Conrad and Sam Bevins were playing it. Had been playing it for over a century."

"Did he tell you that?" He thumbed toward the back seat and the shotgun pelted upholstery. Some form of miracle had kept the back window intact, not that it would have mattered much. Whatever means Sam needed to stay alive, Dean accepted it.

"No." Sam's eyelids fell to half mast. "Not in so many words."

"Then how?"

"Ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?"

Dean's mouth went dry and he looked away, watched the two men stow the shovels and step aside to wait.

"Bevins' body is there. Conrad killed him, probably in a showdown – a game of chicken, except it wasn't enough. Wasn't good enough." Sam's voice grew softer, more pained. "Bevins was the chicken, except he didn't run. He just died. Too easy, too quick, Conrad didn't get to do it his way."

Dean pursed his lips, displeased by the glossy shine to his brother's eyes, the shivering that wracked his body despite the cab's increasing temperature. "We can come back and finish the job."

"No."

For a moment Dean gained a multi-sensory recollection of Sam as a frightened child, clutched to his side, pleading to be kept safe. The details faded to haze, but the desperation in his little brother's voice remained. Years had passed and now Sam pleaded for very little, he argued a hell of a lot, and brooded some, but rarely pleaded. Right now, his exclamation of opposition held an open plea. As did his eyes, dewy with pain and rich with need.

"Okay, we'll torch the place."

An hour later, fire licked the night sky. Embers rose in twisting spirals, and smoke gusseted the stars and blanketed out the sky. Heat radiated off the windshield and warmed the car without the need for the heaters. Good thing too, because they had used almost all the available gas as accelerant to start the fires.

Now they had their own private campfire, two storey's high and four buildings wide. The saloon, set off to one side and beside what must have been the bank, resisted combustion. It stood as a petulant smoldering shape in the night. Direct application of accelerant and flame failed to achieve anything other than acrid smoke. Rather than waste fuel on a lost cause, they had doused the other buildings, and now relied on the intense heat to achieve what they could not.

And it would. Even as Dean watched, flames laced fiery fingers across the saloon's roof, up under the verandah, around the skeletal structure of the gallows. Awe inspiring destruction: beautiful and terrifying. It held Dean transfixed, pinned him with a sense of dread, made it impossible to look away. Memories, recent and past, whittled through his mind: images of what had been, and of what might come. He lacked the strength for it, the courage and resilience to see it through… or to turn away. So he stared and he suffered.

He was not alone.

Brad stood by his SUV, arms folded, expression sorrowful: quiet and resigned – changed. Haunted. The man had experienced the loss of will, of self-determination. He had contributed in events too horrific for the mind to process, and now he had to try to move on. Dean pitied him, but had no energy for sympathetic gestures. Brad's future, his ability to cope with what had occurred, was not Dean's concern.

He rested his wrist on the steering wheel, fingers dangling, and shifted his gaze to his brother. Burnished light played across Sam's face, cast shadows into the sockets of his eyes, made him look gaunt and ill. This was no place for him, but whether they left right now, or waited another five minutes until the saloon was properly alight and gallows fully corrupted by fire, made no difference to Sam's injuries. He was in pain, but not in mortal danger. His body would heal, his mind may not.

But would watching the town burn bring Sam peace, offer a form of cathartic renewal – give him a buffer against the nightmares, the flashbacks, the emotional trauma that would come?

Dean just wasn't sure. Their lives, though violent and horrific and filled with events too difficult to endure, had not prepared them for brutal subjugation and torture. Nothing prepared a man for that.

The only way forward was with truth, as painful, unbearable, or as confronting as that might be. Recovery did not come in the form of candy coated lies.

"You know there's no way we can ever know for sure that Bevins is in there," Dean said. He kept his voice low, even though the windows were wound up. No point stirring Brad toward anger over the potentially needless destruction of the historic settlement. He wet his lips and added, "Not unless we trawl the place, and even then there's no guarantee."

"He's there."

"How do you know? Do you have some spidey sense thing going on? Precognition, or some Jennifer Love-Hewitt spirit connection."

"No."

"Cos if it is, then it'll come in handy."

"It's not."

"It'd give us the edge, better than an EMF, more reliable."

"No, just logic."

Dean nodded, his fingers tingling. "Geek boy logic?"

"Yeah." Sam shivered despite the heat in the car. He stared at the fire, at the gallows that glowed red. It would have been Sam's last conscious memory: the rope around his neck, the rough drag, the terrifying suspension… the pain.

Dean swallowed hard, his hand going to the ignition. His brother's soft voice stilled him.

"He's at peace now. They all are."

"I don't care what they are, as long as they can never come back."

"I care." Sam slurred, he shifted with a restless unease, his gaze skating off the fire and onto his lap. His mouth turned down, and his hands shifted beneath the blanket, no doubt going to his thigh, or the stitches in his abdomen, or the multitude of bruises, abrasions, wounds that bore testament to the abuse he had endured.

"You done here?" Dean tipped a hand toward the fire, and the wrist cast gleamed dull against the night. "Seen enough?"

Sam's head bobbed, it might have been an acknowledgement or the tug of unconsciousness. Either way, they had to move.

Dean wound down the window and shouted to the two men. "We're heading out. You right here?"

"Yeah, we'll stay till it's out." Brad sounded subdued, wearied. He rubbed at his face, avoiding his broken nose. "I'm sorry, for everything. I wish…." He cleared his throat and dropped his hand, let it fall to his side. "If there's ever anything I can do for you."

"Get a dozer in here and flatten the place. Make sure no-one ever builds on it."

"No-one comes out here."

"Not without an invitation, huh?"

Brad bowed his head. The man beside him looked between them, and looked away.

Dean watched them a moment longer, then wound up the window and took off. Dust kicked up behind them, no doubt smothering the two men in fumes and dirt, but he couldn't find it in his heart to care. Brad had been innocent, duped and controlled, but he had gotten away with nothing more than a lost investment. Sam had been tortured, beaten and terrorized, then lynched. Horror like that left scars, deep welts branded into the psyche, fodder for nightmares… or worse.

"Sammy, you still with me?"

"Hmm."

"You holding up okay?"

"Let's go to Vegas."

"Sure, okay. Once you're released from hospital."

"No, now." Sam's head tipped to the side, nudged against the window. His breathing seemed strained, hitched.

"Now, like right now?"

Another head bobble, less coordinated than the last.

"Hey, you're not planning on checking out on me." Dean slowed the car, worry fisting a hand into his chest. He waited, darkness pressing in close, fear matching it inch by inch. "Sammy?"

"Flamin' Nerd," Sam muttered, a half smile on his face. It faded quickly, replaced by a grimace. "On second thoughts." Sam caught his lower lip between his teeth and opened his eyes. They were moist with tears. "Vegas can wait. Hospital first."

"Really. You think?" Dean gunned the engine. "You're a stubborn bastard."

"Takes one."

"Shut up and breathe."

Sam might have laughed, or sobbed, it was sort of hard to tell. Dean regarded him anxiously, his chest tightening as Sam listed against the window, his eyes closed, face streaked with tears.

"Twenty minutes, Sammy, then you'll be back in bed, hooked up to all kinds of mind numbing hallucinogens. The good stuff."

It was actually forty minutes, because Sam insisted on Dean sneaking him back into the hospital in the same way he had gotten him out. Pointless really, Nurse Sondra, the red head who had let him use her computer to check on Brad, cornered them in the hallway and shepherded them back to the room. She gathered silence around her as a stony wall, similar to an English teacher Dean had in school, one that threatened corporal punishment but never followed through.

Today it seemed she might just follow through.

"Did you get it?" she asked once Sam was settled, his wounds checked, IV lines slipped back in place. She fussed over the young man, her voice low as Sam succumbed to exhaustion and pain relief.

Dean ignored the question and posed one himself. "He okay?"

She looked across at him, scanned up and down, settled on the leg, the way he favored one ankle and rested against the doorframe as though it was his new best friend. "Did you get it?"

"Get what?"

"The thing that did this?"

"Don't know what you mean. Sam wanted strawberry icecream on chocolate pancakes, there's this—"

"We are on the fifth story of secured building, the door was locked from the outside, no-one came in and no-one went out. Yet something drove a knife into Sam's thigh with such force that it severed his femoral artery. I know it wasn't you, and I know it wasn't human. So, tell me, did you get it?"

"This place needs better security."

"No, I need an assurance that you found it and you killed it."

"I told you—"

Sondra checked the monitors, and tugged the blankets up. She watched Sam's face, her voice low. "I've paged his doctor, she will run a thorough check. I've also requested for an orderly to bring a bed in here for you."

Dean listed against the doorframe, his ankle throbbing, the pain in his back wearing him down. "I told you, I took him out for pancakes."

"Yes, I'm sure you did." With a forced smile, she approached him, stopped beside him and pointed to the chair. "Sit down, the doctor will check you as well, your ankle could be broken."

"It's a sprain."

"It will need to be properly checked."

"In the morning. Just get her to check Sam. I'm fine.

"If it's broken—"

"It's not. I'd know if it was."

"Then at least let me check it."

He hesitated, reading the lines on her face, the age in her eyes. She was older than he first thought, and the irregular arch of one eyebrow wasn't from a misplucked hair, but from a thin scar. If he wasn't so tired, so drained, he might have wondered what she knew, what she had experienced. But he didn't, because it really didn't matter.

Fifteen minutes later she declared that he would live. He had a sprained ankle, re-opened stitches on his back and a rattle in his lungs. She fixed him up, set him up on an IV drip with only one less line than his brother's, and sat with him as it drew him down. The doctor had not yet arrived.

"I saw it." Sondra made notes on the chart in her hand, her head down. "Old style clothes, like those two-bit westerns. Expected him to have a six-gun and a horse, but he just had a knife."

Dean pulled himself upright and glanced at Sam. His brother slept, laying on his back, his face turned toward them. Peaceful. Safe.

"It got so cold, and the lights went out, just for a second, just long enough for him… for it to." She drew in a sharp breath, finished writing on the chart and straightened. "You need to rest, Sam's going to be fine."

"Thank you," Dean said.

She nodded, in a perfunctory school-maam sort of way, a gesture far beyond her youth, and left the room. Left Dean to his thoughts, his wonder, his confusion. Couldn't figure it out though, and quickly gave up.

"Vegas," he said to the quiet room and his sleeping brother. "It'll all make sense in Vegas. Everything makes sense in Vegas."

Then he fell asleep.

**- The end -**

_Hope you enjoyed it! And, just a reminder for those who don't already know, there's a three day Supernatural convention on in Lawrence, Kansas on the first weekend in August. Check out www(dot)kazcon(dot)net for all the details. I hope to see you there!!_


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